Skip to main content
Main

Lettuce Braized, Spanish Style

A braised lettuce dish cooked with pork fat, spices, and reduced Espagnole sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Lettuce Braized, Spanish Style

12 heads of lettuce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the lettuce

  1. Trim the outer leaves from the lettuce and wash them in cold water, then drain well.

  2. Parboil the lettuce for 5 minutes, then immerse in cold water. Press each head to remove excess water.

Braise

  1. Line a deep flat saucepan with slices of fat pork and place the lettuce heads side by side.

  2. Season with salt, pepper, and nutmeg. Add the faggot of parsley, bay leaves, thyme, and onions with cloves.

  3. Cover the lettuce with more slices of fat pork and moisten with stock broth.

  4. Cover the saucepan and bring to a boil, then reduce heat and cook slowly until done.

Glaze and serve

  1. Drain the lettuce on a sieve and sponge off excess grease with a napkin.

  2. Place the lettuce in a saucepan with half glaze and set in the oven until glazed.

  3. Serve with reduced Espagnole sauce.

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. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Nutmeg + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  4. Thyme + clovetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,108 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Nutmeg + parsleytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,062 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Lettuce
Becomes tender through slow braising and forms the body of the dish.
Fat pork
Bastes the lettuce as it cooks, adding moisture and savory flavor.
Stock broth
Moistens the braise and carries flavor into the lettuce as it cooks.
Half glaze
Adds concentrated savory flavor and a glossy browned coating during oven glazing.
Onions
Add aromatic sweetness and depth to the braising liquid.

The step that matters

Cooking slowly after bringing to a boil. A vigorous boil can toughen and break the lettuce and make the braise cloudy. Gentle, low heat lets the leaves soften evenly while staying intact and moist.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lettuce, pork, pepper, nutmeg, parsley, thyme, clove):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Parsnipfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lettuce, pork, pepper, nutmeg, parsley, thyme, clove. 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.

You might also like

Pork CakePork Cake107 recipesRoast PorkRoast Pork82 recipesCreamy Lettuce SoupCreamy Lettuce Soup8 recipesLettuce SoupLettuce Soup8 recipes