Meaning & use
frisée
Last updated
Meaning
noununcountable
A salad leaf with thin, curly, pale green and yellow strands and a slightly bitter taste.
Grammar: Usually uncountable: add some frisée to the bowl; you rarely say a frisée.
Patterns
- frisée and something
- a salad of frisée
The restaurant served a warm frisée salad with bacon and a poached egg.
I tossed some frisée with lemon juice and olive oil.
Frisée adds a crunchy, bitter bite to a mixed salad.
Common combinations
- frisée salad
- A classic frisée salad comes with bacon pieces.
- frisée lettuce
- Frisée lettuce looks like a pale, curly tangle.
- bitter frisée
- Pair bitter frisée with a sweet dressing.
- a handful of frisée
- Add a handful of frisée just before serving.
Synonyms and how they differ
- curly endive
- This is the common plain-English name for the same plant, and fits grocery labels better than the French-sounding frisée.
- chicory
- This is a wider group of related bitter plants, so it is less specific than frisée.
Word family
Commonly confused: frisée or frizzy?
frisée vs frizzy
Frizzy describes tight, untidy curls, usually hair. Frisée is a salad leaf, though it does look a little frizzy.
Practice
Which dish would most likely include frisée?
Choose one answer.
Frisée is a bitter, curly salad leaf, so a salad is the natural place for it. The other dishes do not normally use salad greens.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “frisée”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.