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Stewed Lettuce

A creamy lettuce dish simmered with butter, flour, cream, nutmeg, sugar, and egg yolks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Stewed Lettuce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the lettuce

  1. Wash the lettuce and tie it with string to keep the leaves together.

  2. Boil water in a pot, add salt, and cook the lettuce until tender.

  3. Remove the lettuce and press gently to squeeze out excess water.

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, melt the butter and mix in the flour.

  2. Gradually add the cream or milk, stirring until smooth.

  3. Add the lettuce, a pinch of salt, nutmeg, and sugar to the sauce.

  4. Let it boil for 10 minutes.

  5. Remove the lettuce, stir in the beaten egg yolks, and serve.

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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Lettuce + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together184 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  5. Lettuce + flourtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,236 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Lettuce
Becomes the tender vegetable base that absorbs the sauce and gives the dish its body.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and carries flavour into the sauce.
All-purpose flour
Thickens the butter and cream into a smooth sauce as it cooks.
Cream or rich milk
Forms the liquid base of the sauce and adds richness and body.
Egg yolks
Enrich and thicken the sauce, adding smoothness and a silky texture.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the savoury salt and nutmeg.

The step that matters

Stir in the beaten egg yolks off the heat. Egg yolks thicken by gentle heat, but if the sauce is too hot they can scramble into grainy specks. Removing the lettuce first and stirring steadily keeps the sauce smooth and creamy.

Swap the lettuce

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, cream, nutmeg, sugar, egg):

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Arrowrootfits better
  3. Sweet potatofits better
  4. Lettucethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, cream, nutmeg, sugar, egg. 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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