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Lettuce, Stuffed

A dish of lettuce heads filled with veal forcemeat, simmered in gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Lettuce and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,037 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Lettuce, Stuffed

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the lettuce

  1. Wash the lettuce heads and boil them in salted water for 15 minutes.

  2. Transfer the lettuce to cold water and let them drain.

  3. Open the lettuce, fill with veal forcemeat, and tie the ends securely.

Cook and serve

  1. Place the stuffed lettuce in a stew-pan and cover with gravy.

  2. Add salt, pepper, and vinegar, then simmer gently for 15 minutes.

  3. Remove the strings, place on a hot dish, and pour the gravy around them.

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. Lettuce + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  2. Pepper + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

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

  3. Lettuce + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,370 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Veal + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,049 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Lettuce + vealtop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together383 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).

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

What each ingredient does

Lettuce heads
Wrap the forcemeat and hold its shape while it cooks and simmers.
Veal forcemeat
Provides the rich, savoury filling that is the main body of the dish.
Good gravy
Keeps the lettuce moist during simmering and forms the sauce served around it.

The step that matters

Simmer gently for 15 minutes. A gentle simmer cooks the forcemeat through without boiling it hard, which could toughen the filling and break apart the tied lettuce.

Swap the lettuce

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, pepper, vinegar):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Cabbagefits better
  3. Mustardfits better
  4. Lettucethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, pepper, vinegar. 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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