Home › The Principles of Cookery › Lettuce, Stewed, with Green Peas
Lettuce, Stewed, with Green Peas
Take two good-sized cabbage lettuces, wash them carefully, remove the stalks and the outer and decayed leaves, sprinkle a tea-spoonful of salt over them, and let them lie in cold water for a couple of hours. Drain them, cut them into slices, and put them into a saucepan, with a quart of young and freshly-shelled green peas, a piece of butter the size of an egg rolled thickly in flour, an eighth of a pint of good stock, and a little pepper, salt, and pounded sugar. Cover closely, and simmer gently until the peas are soft. Time, half an hour to simmer. Probable cost, 1s. Sufficient for five or six persons.
A braise in the French manner, where lettuce is treated as a vegetable rather than a salad. The timings assume peas straight from the pod, which is the one thing worth adjusting.
- Cabbage lettuceThis means a round-headed lettuce with a firm heart — a butterhead rather than a loose-leaf variety. Two good-sized heads will give somewhere around a pound after trimming.
- Butter the size of an eggAbout 2 oz, or 4 tablespoons. Rolled thickly in flour it becomes a rough beurre manié that thickens the small amount of liquid into a sauce as the vegetables cook.
- An eighth of a pint of stockOn the imperial pint of 20 fl oz, that is 2½ fl oz — about a third of a cup. It is deliberately scant: the lettuce and peas release a great deal of water as they collapse.
- Pounded sugarSugar crushed fine in a mortar, as loaf sugar had to be before ready-milled fine sugar was in general kitchen use. A teaspoon of caster or granulated sugar does the same job of lifting the peas.
- A quart of shelled peasNearer 1½ lb than 1 lb, which needs something like 3 to 4 lb of peas in the pod. Frozen petits pois are a fair substitute but need only the last five minutes — a full half-hour turns them grey and mealy.
- The two-hour salted soakMost likely intended to draw insects and grit out of a field-grown lettuce head. With washed supermarket lettuce it is unnecessary, though a short soak does crisp limp leaves.
- Heat and vesselA heavy saucepan with a tight lid, over the lowest heat that keeps a bare simmer. Nothing should brown; the dish is meant to stay pale green and buttery.
- Cost and yieldOne shilling, and stated as sufficient for five or six persons. It reduces considerably, so expect modest portions.
Stewed lettuce belongs to the older European habit of treating lettuce as a pot-herb, cooked like spinach or sorrel, rather than as something eaten raw; the pairing with young peas and butter is essentially the French petits pois à la française, in which lettuce is shredded into the pan to give body and sweetness to the braise. The costing of one shilling, given for five or six people, marks it as an inexpensive dish.