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Stuffed Lettuces

A dish of boiled cabbage leaves stuffed with seasoned forcemeat, battered and fried.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Cabbage and lettuce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 622 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Stuffed Lettuces

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the lettuces

  1. Boil the lettuces for 15 minutes.

  2. Transfer them to cold water and squeeze out excess water.

  3. Gently separate the leaves without detaching them.

  4. Fill the center with seasoned forcemeat and cover with leaves.

  5. Tie each lettuce securely.

Cook and coat

  1. Stew the lettuces à la braise until cooked.

  2. Dry them with a linen cloth.

  3. Prepare a batter with flour, white wine, oil, and salt.

  4. Dip the lettuces in the batter.

  5. Fry until golden brown.

  6. Dip the lettuces in beaten egg.

  7. Cover the egg-coated lettuces with grated bread.

  8. Fry until golden brown.

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. Cabbage + lettucetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together622 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. Lettuce + breadtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together602 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  4. White wine + breadtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together827 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Cabbage + flourtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together978 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Cabbage lettuces
Their leaves wrap the filling and hold it together while cooking.
Forcemeat
Seasoned filling that adds savory flavor and moisture inside the lettuce.
Flour
Forms the batter that coats the lettuces and helps them crisp when fried.
White wine
Thins the batter and adds a light acidity to the coating.
Grated bread
Forms a crumb coating that browns and crisps during frying.

The step that matters

Squeeze out excess water after boiling. Excess water left in the leaves dilutes the filling and stops the batter and crumbs from adhering and crisping well in hot oil.

Swap the cabbage

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lettuce, flour, white wine, bread):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Beetrootfits better
  4. Cabbagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lettuce, flour, white wine, bread. 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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