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Lettuce, Braised Plainly

Braised lettuce cooked with butter, water, and a pinch of sugar until tender.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 98,233 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Lettuce, Braised Plainly

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Reserve the hearts of the lettuces for salads.

  2. Divide the remaining leaves and pack them closely in a saucepan.

Braise

  1. Add 1 tablespoon of butter at the bottom and 1 tablespoon on top.

  2. Pour ¼ cup of water over the leaves and add a pinch of sugar.

  3. Cover and cook over low heat for about 20 minutes or until tender.

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. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

  3. Lettuce + sugartop 29% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,486 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

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

What each ingredient does

Lettuces
Form the bulk of the dish, softening into tender leaves as they cook.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and carries flavour through the packed leaves.

The step that matters

Cover and cook over low heat. Low, covered heat lets the leaves steam in their own moisture and the added water, softening their cell walls evenly. Higher heat or an uncovered pan can scorch the butter and dry the leaves before they become tender.

Swap the lettuce

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

  1. Sweet potatofits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Potatofits better
  4. Lettucethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar. 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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