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Lettuce Braized, Spanish Style

A braised lettuce dish cooked with pork fat, herbs, onions, and reduced Espagnole sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Lettuce Braized, Spanish Style

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the lettuce

  1. Trim off the outer leaves of the lettuce.

  2. Wash the lettuce in cold water.

  3. Drain the lettuce well.

  4. Parboil the lettuce for 5 minutes.

  5. Immerse the lettuce in cold water.

  6. Press each head to remove excess water.

Braise

  1. Line a deep flat saucepan with slices of fat pork.

  2. Arrange the lettuce heads side by side in the saucepan.

  3. Season the lettuce with salt, pepper, and nutmeg.

  4. Add the bundle of parsley, bay leaves, thyme, and onions with cloves.

  5. Cover the lettuce with more slices of fat pork.

  6. Moisten the lettuce with stock broth.

  7. Cover the saucepan.

  8. Bring the contents to a boil, then reduce heat to cook slowly until done.

  9. Drain the lettuce on a sieve.

  10. Sponge off excess grease with a napkin.

Glaze and serve

  1. Place the lettuce in a saucepan with half glaze.

  2. Set the saucepan in the oven until glazed.

  3. Serve the lettuce with reduced Espagnole sauce.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Nutmeg + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Thyme + clovetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,108 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Nutmeg + parsleytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,062 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Lettuce
Forms the main body of the dish, becoming tender and soft as it braises slowly.
Fat pork
Lines and covers the lettuce, adding fat and savory flavor as it cooks.
Stock broth
Moistens the lettuce during braising, keeping it from drying out and adding savory depth.
Half glaze
Concentrates savory flavor and gives the lettuce a glossy, browned finish.
Reduced espagnole sauce
Adds rich, savory body to the finished dish as a serving sauce.

The step that matters

Pressing the lettuce heads. Excess water left in the heads dilutes the braising liquid and keeps the leaves from taking on flavor and glaze, so each head should be pressed dry before braising.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lettuce, pork, pepper, nutmeg, parsley, thyme, clove):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Parsnipfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lettuce, pork, pepper, nutmeg, parsley, thyme, clove. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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