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Endive Salad
Place two or three pieces of endive on each salad plate, serve with French dressing. Have endive very cold and crisp.
Barely a recipe by modern standards, but the two words that need translating are "endive" and "French dressing" — both mean something different now than they did on an American table of the 1920s and 30s.
- Which endiveIn American cookbooks of this period "endive" could mean either the pale, tight, torpedo-shaped head sold today as Belgian endive or witloof chicory, or the curly-leaved plant now called frisee, which was also often listed as chicory. The word "pieces" may point to the spears of a blanched head, but the recipe does not say.
- French dressing then and nowFrench dressing here means a plain vinaigrette: roughly three parts oil to one part vinegar, with salt, pepper and often a little paprika, whisked or shaken just before serving. It is not the sweet orange bottled dressing that later took the name in the United States.
- Cold and crisp is the whole instructionWith no cooking involved, temperature and texture carry the dish. Trim the base, wrap the heads in a damp cloth and refrigerate at least an hour; chill the plates too if the meal allows.
- BitternessThe cut base and the innermost core are the bitterest parts. Cutting a shallow cone out of the root end takes the edge off without cooking or soaking, which would cost you the crispness the recipe insists on.
- Dress at the last momentAcid draws moisture out of the leaves and they lose crispness as they stand. Spoon the dressing over at the table, or serve it alongside.
- YieldA head of Belgian endive separates into a good many usable spears, so one head will dress several plates at two or three pieces each, depending on the size of the head.
The blanched heads are generally traced to mid-nineteenth-century Belgium, where chicory roots forced in the dark produced pale, tender shoots, and the technique still explains the vegetable's appearance and its mild bitterness.