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Lettuce, Etc

A stew of boiled lettuce and bacon finished with a butter‑flour‑milk‑egg sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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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, Etc

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the lettuce

  1. Remove the outer leaves of the lettuce, clean, and wash well.

  2. Boil the lettuce in salted water for 10 minutes, then drain.

  3. Sprinkle salt, pepper, and nutmeg on top of the lettuce heads.

  4. Tie each lettuce head with string.

  5. Press the lettuce to extract water.

Braise

  1. In a stewpan, place bacon slices and add the lettuce heads.

  2. Season the mixture with parsley, thyme, bay leaf, salt, and pepper.

  3. Cover with water.

  4. Simmer for about 2 hours in a 300°F (150°C) oven.

  5. Remove the lettuce from the oven.

  6. Place the lettuce on a dish with the top upward.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. In a separate pan, melt butter over medium heat.

  2. Stir in flour.

  3. Add a little milk and stir the mixture.

  4. Simmer for 10 minutes.

  5. Remove the sauce from heat.

  6. Mix in beaten egg yolks.

  7. Pour the sauce over the warm lettuce.

  8. 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. 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
Forms the body of the stew, becoming tender and absorbing the braising flavours during slow cooking.
Bacon
Adds salty, smoky fat that flavours the lettuce and the cooking liquid.
Butter
Provides fat and richness, and with flour forms the base of the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the butter and milk into a smooth sauce.
Egg yolks
Enrich and thicken the sauce, giving it a creamy texture.

The step that matters

Mix in beaten egg yolks. Egg yolks thicken when heated gently but can scramble if the sauce is too hot. Remove the sauce from heat before adding them and stir steadily so the sauce becomes smooth and creamy.

Swap the lettuce

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, nutmeg, parsley, thyme, clove, butter, flour. 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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