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Stuffed Lettuce

Stuffed Lettuce is a dish of lettuce leaves filled with veal, herbs, and pork fat, simmered in gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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. Prepare the lettuce by parboiling and immersing in cold water.

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

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

  4. Place some forced meat of veal flavored with cooked fine herbs in the center of each head.

  5. Reshape the lettuce, trim them, and arrange in a deep flat saucepan lined with thin slices of fat pork.

Braise and serve

  1. Moisten with veal gravy and bring to a boil.

  2. Cover the saucepan and place it in a 350°F (175°C) oven.

  3. Occasionally sprinkle with gravy to ensure they glaze nicely.

  4. Once cooked, strain off the gravy, remove excess grease, and serve the gravy with the stuffed 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 wrapper that holds the stuffing and softens into a tender, moist texture when cooked.
Forced meat of veal
Provides the rich, savory stuffing that sets firm as it cooks inside the lettuce.
Veal gravy
Moistens the dish during cooking and, reduced by glazing, gives the lettuce a glossy finish.
Fat pork
Lines the pan, releasing fat that adds richness and keeps the lettuce from sticking.

The step that matters

Sprinkling the lettuce with gravy during the oven time. Basting keeps the surface from drying out and helps the gravy reduce and glaze the leaves evenly, so they do not turn dry or patchy.

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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