Preserved Lettuce Whole
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the lettuce
Trim off the outer leaves of the lettuce heads and wash them well in cold water.
Parboil the lettuce in lightly salted water for 10 minutes.
Immerse the lettuce in cold water and dry on a napkin.
Arrange the lettuce in a flat saucepan and moisten with enough broth to cover.
Cook until tender, then drain on a napkin.
Cut out the stalks and halve the lettuce heads lengthwise, placing the tops close together.
Can and process
Pack the lettuce in square quart tin cans like asparagus.
Cover with lightly salted water, seal the cans, and boil in a hot water bath for 2 hours.
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
- Is the vegetable being preserved, so it provides the entire texture and bulk of the finished dish.
- Broth (in the method)
- Moistens the lettuce during cooking, adding savory flavor as the leaves become tender.
- Coarse sea salt
- Lightly seasons the parboiling and canning water, flavoring the lettuce.
The step that matters
Sealing and boiling the cans for 2 hours. Lettuce is a low-acid vegetable, so it must be sealed airtight and held at a full boil for the whole time to destroy spoilage microbes. A short or incomplete process risks unsafe preserved food.
“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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