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Endive, Creamed
Wash the endive carefully, and pick off the outer green leaves, leaving only the white part. Boil until tender, drain well, return it to the kettle, and nearly cover with milk. When the milk boils, thicken it with a little flour stirred to a paste with a small quantity of cold milk, season with butter, salt and pepper, and serve.
KALE-This is cooked and served the same as spinach; or it may be tied in a bundle, boiled like asparagus and served on toast with a generous allowance of butter. It may also be boiled in a bundle and drained well, after which milk will be added and thickened to a cream with a little flour, the whole being seasoned with butter, salt and pepper.
A plain two-part vegetable entry: endive braised soft and finished in a milk sauce thickened in the pan, with kale treated the same way. The technique is sound; only the timings and the vagueness about quantities need attention.
- Which endiveThe recipe is ambiguous. "Pick off the outer green leaves, leaving only the white part" implies a head with green outer leaves and a pale heart, which suits curly endive or escarole; Belgian endive (witloof chicory) is blanched throughout and has little green to remove. Either can be cooked this way, but the chicories stay more assertively bitter.
- Boil until tenderDepending on which endive you use, expect anywhere from about 5 minutes for cut curly endive or escarole to 15-20 minutes for whole blanched heads; test rather than time. Squeeze the drained leaves or heads gently before returning them to the pan, or the retained water will thin the sauce.
- Cut the bitternessA little sugar and a squeeze of lemon in the boiling water is a common modern way of taming chicories, though the recipe does not call for it.
- The sauce, in numbersThe sauce -- the recipe gives no quantities. "Nearly cover with milk" means as much milk as the pan and the vegetable require; slake the flour in a little cold milk as directed and add it gradually until the sauce coats, then cook it on a minute or two so it loses the raw-flour taste before the butter goes in.
- KettleHere the kettle is simply a wide, deep saucepan, not a tea kettle. Anything that holds the heads in one layer will do.
- KaleModern curly kale wants the stems stripped out and only about 5-8 minutes in boiling water; the recipe gives no time. Tying it in a bundle to boil like asparagus, as the text suggests, keeps the leaves together for lifting out and draining, but a colander does the same job.
- YieldThe recipe states no quantity or number of servings; scale the milk and flour to whatever amount of endive or kale you cook.
The finish here is the standard American cream sauce of the period, made not as a separate white sauce but by thickening the cooking milk in the pan with slaked flour, a shortcut that also shows up in this era's creamed onions, celery and cabbage.