Home › The Principles of Cookery › Lettuce in Salads
Lettuce in Salads
Lettuces which are to be used for salads should be fresh and young. The thick bitter stalk should be cut off, and the outer and decayed leaves removed. The great secret in preparing lettuce for salad is to have it quite dry. In order to ensure this, look the leaves over carefully. In all probability the white, tender leaves at the heart of the plant will be entirely free from insects and grit. When this is the case, do not plunge them into water, as it only spoils the flavour. Any leaves, however, about which there is the slightest doubt must be scrupulously washed in two or three waters. When taken out of the water they should be well shaken, placed in a wire basket, and hung for four or five hours in an airy situation. When a basket is not at hand, the lettuce may be divided into small pieces and shaken in a dry cloth until not a particle of moisture remains. The French are careful of cutting them, as they maintain that contact with steel spoils the flavour of the salad. The sauce should never be added until the moment before serving. Probable cost, 1d. each. Sufficient, a large lettuce for two or three persons. LETTUCE PUREE. Put three or four lettuces into a quart of weak stock, with two onions, two carrots, and two ounces of lean bacon cut small; boil for an hour, then rub all through a sieve. Thicken with a little flour and butter, season to taste with pepper and salt, add a dessert-spoonful of Bovril, stir well, and serve with small croutons of bread.
Two things sit under one heading here: a method for preparing salad lettuce, and a lettuce soup that finishes the page. Both are workable, though the soup's timings belong to another era of vegetable cookery.
- The hinge: dry leavesDressing will not cling to wet lettuce, it slides off and pools at the bottom of the bowl. The four or five hours in a hanging wire basket is simply a Victorian salad spinner; thirty seconds in a spinner followed by a few minutes on a towel does the same job.
- Steel and lettuceThe book says only that the French hold that contact with steel spoils the flavour. The usual modern explanation is that carbon steel blades can discolour cut leaves and leave a faint metallic tang; stainless is far less reactive, so cutting is less of an issue now, though tearing still bruises less.
- Cost and yield"1d. each" is one pre-decimal penny, a period price note of no use except as a reminder of how cheap salad greens were. The serving guide holds up: one large head dresses two or three.
- Quart of stockAn imperial quart is 40 fl oz, about 1.1 litres, rather than the 32 fl oz of a US quart. "Weak stock" means a light, thin broth, not a reduced or concentrated one.
- BovrilA dessertspoonful is about 2 teaspoons. Bovril is still sold, but any concentrated beef extract or a teaspoon of good demi-glace serves; add it off the heat and taste, since it is very salty and will change how much salt the soup needs.
- An hour is too longLettuce collapses in ten to fifteen minutes and turns olive-brown and slightly bitter after that. Cook the carrot, onion and bacon until tender first, then add the lettuce for the last few minutes if you want the soup to stay green.
- Sieve or blender"Rub all through a sieve" was the standard purée method of the period, alongside mortar and tammy-cloth work. A blender does it in seconds; pass it through a fine sieve afterwards only if you want the texture the original intended.
- Thickening"A little flour and butter" is unspecified: it could be worked together raw as beurre manié or cooked as a roux. Either way, add it to the simmering soup in small pieces and cook two or three minutes to lose the raw flour taste. Roughly 1 tablespoon of each will lightly thicken a quart.
- ServingThe soup makes about four modest bowls. The recipe asks only for "small croutons of bread"; frying them in butter suits a thin lettuce base better than dry toasting.
The lesson in the first half is almost entirely about handling: dry leaves, no steel, dressing at the last moment. That last rule survives because it is chemistry rather than fashion -- salt and acid draw water out of the leaf cells and a dressed salad goes limp within minutes. Cooked lettuce dishes such as this purée have a long history of their own, quite apart from the salad bowl. The Bovril is a rough dating clue: beef extract was marketed under that name from the mid-1880s, so its appearance here points to a later printing rather than the earliest text.