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Preserve

Peeseeved Lettuce Whole

Whole heads of lettuce are parboiled, cooked in broth, sealed in tin cans, and boiled in a water bath for preserving.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Peeseeved Lettuce Whole

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the lettuce

  1. Trim off the outer leaves of the lettuce heads.

  2. Wash the lettuce well in cold water.

  3. Parboil the lettuce in lightly salted water for 10 minutes.

  4. Immerse the lettuce in cold water and dry on a napkin.

Cook and pack

  1. Arrange the lettuce in a flat saucepan and moisten with enough broth to cover.

  2. Cook until tender, then drain on a napkin.

  3. Cut out the stalks and halve the heads of lettuce lengthwise.

  4. Lay the tops close together in square quart tin cans.

  5. Cover with lightly salted water, seal the cans, and boil in a hot water bath for 2 hours.

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

What each ingredient does

Lettuce
Forms the bulk of the dish and becomes tender when parboiled and cooked.
Broth
Moistens the lettuce during cooking, adding savory flavor as it reduces.

The step that matters

Parboil the lettuce in lightly salted water. Brief parboiling softens the leaves and sets their bright color before packing. Cooking too long makes the leaves limp and dull, so the lettuce loses texture before it is sealed and processed.

“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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