Endives

Appears in
A Canon of Vegetables

By Raymond Sokolov

Published 2007

  • About

Endive is chicory and chicory is endive (unless it is radicchio), although they are not the same. How can this be? The confusion is purely nomenclatural, or you could blame it on the Belgians. Around 1850, plantsmen at the Brussels botanic garden decided to force the roots of Cichorium intybus, up till then mainly exploited as a coffee ersatz, to grow leaves indoors in darkness. Buried under soil, to encourage a tight head of leaves, the plant complied and the leaves themselves came up out of the ground all pale and mildly bitter.