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Stuffed Lettuce

Stuffed lettuce with veal filling, cooked in a pork‑lined pan with veal gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 13,015 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Stuffed Lettuce

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the lettuce

  1. Parboil the lettuce and immerse it in cold water.

  2. Press the lettuce to dry and spread the leaves on a towel.

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

  4. Place some forced meat of veal in the center of each head.

  5. Reshape the lettuce.

  6. Trim the lettuce.

Braise and glaze

  1. Arrange the lettuce in a deep flat saucepan lined with fat pork.

  2. Moisten the lettuce with veal gravy.

  3. Bring the mixture to a boil.

  4. Cover the saucepan.

  5. Place the saucepan in a 350°F (175°C) oven.

  6. Occasionally sprinkle with gravy to achieve a nice glaze.

Finish and serve

  1. Strain off the gravy.

  2. Remove excess grease.

  3. Serve the gravy with the lettuce.

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. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

  4. Veal + porktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,930 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

  5. Meat + porktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,208 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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

What each ingredient does

Lettuce
Forms the edible wrapping that holds the forced meat and becomes tender during braising.
Forced meat of veal
Provides the rich, savory filling that flavors each head of lettuce.
Fat pork
Lines the pan, adding fat that enriches the braising liquid and keeps the lettuce from sticking.
Veal gravy
Moistens the lettuce during cooking and builds the glaze and flavor of the sauce.

The step that matters

Covering and basting during the oven braise. Lettuce can turn mushy or dry if overcooked. Covering traps steam to cook it gently, and occasional basting with gravy builds a glaze while keeping the leaves moist.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Sagefits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Nutmegthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lettuce, pepper, meat, veal, pork. 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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