How do you English and Americans eat endive? I looked it up in a few dictionaries and they all gave me the same explanation: a plant with curly green leaves eaten uncooked in salads. We also eat it when it’s boiled, with a sauce. Then they mentioned endive as as a synonym for chicory. How do you usually eat it?
For the record this is what dictionaries mention as endive;
And this one as chicory:
In the U.S. we don’t eat it much.
Frisée, the leafy variety, shows up in salads sometimes in more upscale restaurants.
Belgian endive is less common. I only think I’ve had it once in the U.S. The leaves served as a “boat” for a cheese mixture in a Spanish restaurant.
Americans don’t normally eat endive. I know the word but barely know what it is.
Chicory is something different. I’ve heard of chicory because it’s sometimes used as a coffee substitute. People who are into “health foods” sometimes drink it. It’s also eaten by grazing animals. When I briefly worked on a farm I think we had some chicory in the fields for forage.
I found a chicory-endive connection but I’m a little confused. There are different varieties of endive. I get the impression that one of those species is misidentified as chicory.
I think endive and chicory are in the same family of plants, but are different subspecies or something like that. I think the bottom line is that they are not synonyms, but are closely related.
