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Lettuce, Boiled

Boiled lettuce served with melted butter over buttered toast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Lettuce and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 25% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,287 recipes. Both carry trans-2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

Lettuce, Boiled

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Trim off the green outer leaves from the lettuce and wash the heart well.

  2. Tie the lettuce heart with a piece of tape.

Boil

  1. Place the taped lettuce heart in a saucepan of boiling salted water (1 tablespoon salt per quart of water).

  2. Boil quickly until tender, about 20 to 30 minutes.

  3. Carefully lift the lettuce out of the water.

  4. Drain the lettuce well.

  5. Remove the tape from the lettuce.

Serve

  1. Cut the lettuce in half lengthwise and then across.

  2. Lay the cut lettuce on a slice of buttered toast in a hot vegetable dish.

  3. Pour melted butter sauce over the lettuce.

  4. 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. Lettuce + buttertop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

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

What each ingredient does

White cos lettuce
Forms the body of the dish, becoming tender when boiled.
Melted butter
Adds richness and moisture over the cooked lettuce.
Buttered toast
Soaks up moisture and provides a base under the lettuce.

The step that matters

Drain the lettuce well. Water left in the leaves dilutes the melted butter and makes the buttered toast soggy under the lettuce.

“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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