Tangled
Sir: I am sure your cookery correspondent Jennifer Paterson is wrong about chicory and endive. What she calls chicory (Food, 13 October) is in fact endive and vice versa.
This can easily be proved by reference to the Dutch name, witloof, which she gives. The Dutch call it so, first because it is wit, white, and secondly because 't looft, it runs. Anyone who has seen it growing will appreciate that this description can only fit the 'tangled, curly, lettuce-type vegetable' which she calls endive, but which is actual- ly chicory. I have had the misfortune to spend a good part of my life in Brussels, and the local bilingual supermarket always labelled the stuff chicoree-witloof. But perhaps Dutch-speakers are as confused about it as we are.
Michael Fry
15 Rothesay Place, Edinburgh
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