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Baked Stuffed Lettuces

Baked stuffed lettuce filled with sausage forcemeat, baked with Madeira sauce and white broth.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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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 ↓

Baked Stuffed Lettuces

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Pick, clean, pare, and wash the lettuce heads thoroughly.

  2. Parboil the lettuce for 5 minutes, then drain well.

Stuff and tie

  1. Fill the insides of the lettuce with godiveau or sausage forcemeat.

  2. Tie each head and place them in a sauté pan, laying them down carefully.

Braise and serve

  1. Add the Madeira sauce and white broth, season with salt and pepper.

  2. Cover with buttered paper and cook in a 400°F (200°C) oven for 15 minutes.

  3. Arrange on a hot dish, untie, pour the sauce over, and 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 + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,037 recipes

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

  2. Sauce + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Lettuce + saucetop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,019 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Pepper + buttertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

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

Sauce and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 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 outer wrapper that holds the filling and turns tender as it cooks.
Madeira sauce
Adds richness, sweetness and aromatic depth to the cooking liquid that becomes the sauce.
White broth
Provides moisture that gently braises the lettuce and carries flavour into the sauce.

The step that matters

Drain the lettuce well after parboiling. Water left inside the lettuce heads thins the Madeira and broth sauce and can make the wrapped heads soggy instead of tender and well flavoured.

Swap the lettuce

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sauce, pepper, butter. 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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