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Stuffed Lettuce
Wash 4 or 5 large lettuces. Boil them in plenty of salted water for fifteen minutes. Throw them at once into cold water, and after-wards let them drain. Open them, fill them with good veal force-meat, tie the ends securely, and put them into a stewpan with as much good gravy as will cover them, 1 teaspoonful of salt, 1/2 teaspoonful of pepper, and 1 teaspoonful of vinegar. Simmer gently for another fifteen minutes, remove the strings, place them on a hot dish, and pour the gravy round them. If preferred, the lettuces may be prepared as above, and then put into a braising-pan, with thin slices of bacon above and under them. A carrot, an onion stuck with 2 cloves, a bunch of sweet herbs, and a little good gravy may then be added, and the lettuces simmered gently for an hour and a half. A glassful of sherry may be added to the gravy before it is served.
A Victorian way of treating lettuce as a hot vegetable rather than a salad. The method is sound, but the timings assume a raw meat stuffing that needs longer than fifteen minutes to cook through.
- Cook the forcemeat properlyRaw ground veal packed inside a rolled lettuce will not reach a safe temperature in fifteen minutes of gentle simmering. Check the centre of the stuffing with a thermometer and take it to 160F; the longer braise given as the alternative (an hour and a half) handles this comfortably.
- Which lettuceUse cos or romaine, or the large butterhead types. Their leaves are broad and sturdy enough to wrap and tie. Modern crisphead iceberg shatters and loose-leaf varieties collapse to nothing.
- "Good gravy"Not thickened pan gravy in the modern sense, but a well-flavoured brown stock, ideally veal. The recipe simply says as much as will cover the lettuces, so the amount depends on the pan; two or three cups may do in a close-fitting one, more in a wider pan.
- Veal forcemeatGround veal bound with breadcrumbs, an egg, chopped parsley, lemon zest and a little grated onion, seasoned well. Allow roughly 1 lb for four or five lettuces. Ground pork or a pork-veal mix works if veal is hard to find.
- A glassful of sherryThe recipe does not specify the glass; if taken as the conventional wineglassful of the period, that is usually reckoned at about 2 fl oz, roughly a quarter cup. Add it near the end so it does not cook down to nothing.
- Blanching and shockingThe fifteen-minute boil is longer than you would think, but it is what makes the leaves pliable enough to open out and refill. The plunge into cold water sets the colour and stops the cooking; drain hard, pressing gently, or the stuffing will be waterlogged.
- TyingKitchen twine, two or three turns per head, tied loosely enough that the forcemeat can swell. Cut the strings on the serving dish rather than in the pan.
- YieldFour or five heads serve four as a light main course, or five to six as a side with roast meat.
Braised and stuffed lettuce belongs to a long European tradition, strongest in French cookery, of treating lettuce as a cooked vegetable in its own right - laitues braisees appear in French kitchen manuals through the nineteenth century, usually blanched, folded and stewed in stock with bacon. The two methods offered here, a quick stew in gravy and a slow braise over bacon with carrot, clove-stuck onion and a bundle of herbs, are simply the shorter and longer versions of that idea.