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Puree of Chicory
Remove stalks and any stale leaves adhering from four small heads chicory, thoroughly wash, drain on a sieve, plunge into a quart boiling water with a teaspoon each salt and sugar, and let boil for thirty-five minutes. Drain on a sieve, press all water out with a skimmer, then finely chop it. Place it in a small saucepan with an ounce good butter, three saltspoons salt, half teaspoon sugar and two saltspoons pepper. Stir well on the fire while heating for five minutes, remove and use as directed.
A French-style vegetable purée that reads as a component rather than a finished dish — the closing "use as directed" means it was meant to be spooned under a meat course or into a garnish. A few of the measures and one of the ingredient names need translating.
- Which chicory"Four small heads" may point to the tight, pale, torpedo-shaped heads sold today as Belgian endive or witloof, though books of this period also used "chicory" for the curly sort, which is likewise sold in heads. If the blanched heads are meant, four small ones is roughly 3/4 to 1 lb.
- SaltspoonsA saltspoon is a quarter teaspoon. Three saltspoons salt is 3/4 teaspoon and two saltspoons pepper is 1/2 teaspoon — a firm hand with the pepper for under a pound of vegetable, worth halving on a first attempt.
- An ounce of butterTwo tablespoons. "Good butter" in this period meant fresh and unrancid rather than any particular fat content; unsalted is the sensible choice given the salt already added.
- The sugar is not optionalThe sugar -- Chicory is bitter, and the teaspoon of sugar in the blanching water plus the half teaspoon at the end works against that bitterness.
- Thirty-five minutesLong by modern standards, but the point is a purée soft enough to chop to a paste, not a tender-crisp vegetable. Fifteen to twenty minutes will give you cooked endive; the full time gives you the texture the recipe is after.
- Press it dryThe hinge of the dish. Endive holds a great deal of water, and any left in will thin the purée into a puddle when it hits the butter. Press hard in the sieve, or wring the chopped chicory in a clean towel.
- Chopping versus blendingFinely chopping by knife gives a slightly coarse, textured purée, which is what the original produces. A food processor will give you something smoother and looser — pulse rather than run it if you want to stay close.
- Yield and usePerhaps about a cup of purée, enough for four as a garnish. The recipe says only "use as directed" and does not name the dishes it was meant to accompany.
Chicory (Cichorium intybus) had two quite separate lives in the kitchens of this period: the root, roasted and ground as a coffee stretcher, and the leaf, forced in darkness to produce the blanched heads the French call endive and the Belgians witloof. The forced head is generally traced to Belgium around the middle of the nineteenth century. However it arrived here, the recipe's abrupt closing phrase, "use as directed," gives the game away: this is one entry in a system of components a cook was expected to assemble into something larger.