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Cabbage Lettuce with Gravy (Coriander seed salt and pepper)
coriander seed, salt and pepper together; then mix the rice and lentils. Scald the vine or cabbage leaves, shake them carefully to dry. Put two tablespoonfuls of the mixture in each leaf, roll loosely, folding in the ends. Tie with darning cotton and place each roll as finished in the bottom of a large saucepan. Cover with stock, add a bay leaf, one onion cut in slices and a blade of mace. Cover the saucepan and stew slowly three-quarters of an hour; when done take out carefully with an egg-slice. Remove the strings and arrange the rolls neatly in a flat heated dish. Put one tablespoonful of butter in a saucepan, when melted, add an even tablespoonful of flour, mix till smooth, then add a half pint of the stock in which the rolls were boiled, stir continually until thick and smooth. Add the salt and pepper, take from the fire, add the beaten yolk of an egg and two teaspoonfuls of tarragon vinegar. Pour this over the rolls and serve.
This may be served for lunch or as a course by itself.
The page begins mid-sentence — the opening lines, with the quantities of rice and lentils and the amount of seasoning, are missing — but the method from the leaves onward is complete and workable. Read it as stuffed cabbage or vine leaves with an egg-thickened velouté.
- The filling must be cooked firstThe filling was probably already cooked -- the lost opening lines almost certainly called for boiled rice and lentils; three-quarters of an hour of gentle stewing inside a wrapped leaf is unlikely to cook either from raw. Season the mixture assertively, since the leaf and the stock dilute it.
- Missing quantitiesWith the first lines cut off, no amounts are given. As a working ratio, about 1 cup cooked rice to 1 cup cooked brown or green lentils, with a teaspoon of ground coriander, fills roughly twelve to sixteen leaves at two tablespoons each.
- Darning cottonPlain cotton kitchen twine. Avoid anything synthetic or dyed. Tightly packed rolls seam-side down in the pan will often hold without tying at all.
- Scalding the leavesDip cabbage leaves in boiling water 2-3 minutes until pliable; brined vine leaves need only a rinse and a brief soak in hot water to shed salt. Pare down the thick central rib of a cabbage leaf so it rolls without splitting.
- Egg-slice and blade of maceAn egg-slice is a thin slotted spatula. A blade of mace is one piece of the lacy aril from nutmeg; a scant quarter teaspoon of ground mace substitutes, though it clouds the stock.
- Half a pint of stockOne US cup, or 10 fl oz if you are reading an English printing. With a tablespoon each of butter and flour it makes a sauce on the thin side, which is what is wanted for pouring.
- The egg yolkThe hinge of the sauce. Take the pan off the heat, temper a spoonful or two of the hot sauce into the beaten yolk, then stir it back in. If it returns to the boil the yolk curdles and the sauce goes grainy. The recipe adds the tarragon vinegar last, off the heat.
- YieldTwelve to sixteen rolls, enough for four as a light lunch or six as a separate course, as the recipe suggests.
Stuffed leaves belong to a family that runs from Ottoman dolma through the Greek dolmades and the cabbage rolls of central and eastern Europe, and English and American cookbooks of the later nineteenth century absorbed the idea as a genteel "entrée." The filling here is rice and lentils together, seasoned with coriander, in place of the forcemeat of veal or beef found in many other versions of the dish. That combination is itself long established across the eastern Mediterranean and the Levant, where rice and pulses cooked together were everyday fare. The finish is familiar Anglo-American kitchen practice: a butter-and-flour roux slackened with the cooking stock, enriched with an egg yolk and sharpened with tarragon vinegar -- close to a domesticated sauce poulette, the kind of French-derived liaison that cookery-school writers of the period taught as a mark of a properly finished dish.