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Lettuce
12 heads of lettuce Salt and pepper I sliced onion 1/2 pint (I cup) water I small bunch parsley 2 ozs. (1/4 cup) melted butter 9 turnips
What survives here is the ingredient list only; the method has dropped out, as it often does in these compact casserole manuals where one set of directions served several entries. The proportions still tell you what the dish is: lettuce and turnips braised together in a covered pot with butter, onion, parsley and a very little water.
- The missing methodRead this as a braise, not a bake. Trimmed heads and peeled turnips go into a buttered casserole with the onion, parsley, seasoning and the cup of water, the lid goes on, and the whole thing cooks gently until the turnips yield to a knife. Nothing in the list will brown or crisp.
- ScaleTwelve heads of lettuce and nine turnips is a banquet quantity, probably serving twelve or more. For four people, three heads, two or three turnips, a quarter of the onion and about a quarter of a cup of water in a small covered pot.
- Which lettuceModern iceberg and soft butterhead collapse to water. Romaine or cos, or the firm little gem types, hold their shape better; halve or quarter them lengthwise and leave the core intact so they hold together.
- Measure conversionsThe book helpfully glosses its own units: half a pint is one American cup, two ounces of butter is a quarter cup. Half an imperial pint is 10 fluid ounces rather than 8, so working from a British pint gives about a quarter more liquid than this dish wants.
- Turnip sizeNine turnips is meaningless without a size; small turnips of two to three inches across are the likeliest reading. Two large modern purple-tops will stand in for four or five of them. Cut them so they finish at the same time as the lettuce.
- Water and saltA cup of water for a full dish is deliberately mean. The lettuce releases a great deal of liquid, so resist adding more, and salt at the end once the volume has settled or the sauce turns harsh.
- ServingLift the lettuce out whole, reduce the pan liquid hard for a minute or two, and pour it back over. Without that reduction the dish arrives at the table watery.
Cooked lettuce reads oddly now, but laitue braisée was standard in nineteenth-century French vegetable cookery and passed into English and American books as a gentle, buttery side dish for veal, lamb or poultry. Its appearance here is no accident: the vogue for casserole cookery was driven by the argument that a covered earthenware or enamelled pot conserved the juices and flavours that boiling in open water threw away, and a watery vegetable like lettuce made the point neatly. Pairing it with turnips is thrifty rather than fashionable, the turnip supplying the sweetness and body the lettuce lacks. Books of this kind were often assembled around a single technique, with the instructions given once at the head of a chapter, which may be why this entry survives as a bare list of ingredients — though that is a guess.