Skip to main content
Main

Stewed Lettuces

A dish of cooked lettuce simmered with butter, flour, broth, and vinegar, served hot with fried bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Lettuce and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,037 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Stewed Lettuces

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Remove the outer leaves and stalks from the lettuce.

  2. Wash the lettuce thoroughly and soak it in salted water.

Cook and press

  1. Cook the lettuce until tender, about 20 to 30 minutes.

  2. Lift it out and press out excess water; chop it slightly.

Make the stew

  1. In a clean saucepan, heat the chopped lettuce with pepper, salt, and a small slice of butter.

  2. Sprinkle in a little flour and stir well.

  3. Add a small cup of broth or gravy and boil until the mixture is fairly dry.

  4. Stir in a little pale vinegar or lemon juice and serve hot, garnished with fried bread.

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

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

  2. Lettuce + flourtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,236 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Pepper + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

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

  5. Lettuce + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,370 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Lettuce
Forms the bulk of the dish and becomes soft and tender when cooked.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, rounded mouthfeel to the stewed mixture.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid so the stew becomes less watery and clings together.
Broth or gravy
Supplies the savoury cooking liquid that is reduced to flavour the lettuce.
Pale vinegar or lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and balances the richness.

The step that matters

Boil until fairly dry. Boiling after the broth is added lets water evaporate and the flour thicken the liquid. Stopping too early leaves the stew thin and watery, while boiling too long makes it dry and pasty.

Swap the lettuce

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, butter, flour, vinegar):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Mustardfits better
  4. Lettucethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, butter, flour, vinegar. 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

Creamy Lettuce SoupCreamy Lettuce Soup8 recipesLettuce SoupLettuce Soup8 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipes