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Cooked Lettuce
Very often you will find that you cannot use all your lettuces, that they have begun to bolt and are no good for salad. This is the moment to cook them. Discard any bad leaves and wash the others carefully. Boil them for twelve minutes, take them off the fire, drain them and dry them in a clean cloth so as to get rid of all the water. Mince them finely, then put them into a saucepan with a lump of butter, pepper and salt. Stir till they begin to turn color, then put in a thimbleful of flour melted in milk. Stir constantly, and if the vegetable becomes dry, moisten with more flour and milk. Let it simmer for quarter of an hour, and turn it out as a vegetable with meat.
A thrifty way to use lettuce that has gone bitter and leggy in the garden, cooked down much as you would spinach. The essential move is drying the boiled leaves properly — wet lettuce will never take on colour in the butter.
- Which lettuceBolting lettuce is what this is for: the leaves have turned coarse and bitter, and heat softens both faults. Romaine and other cos types hold up best; loose butterhead collapses to very little. Supermarket bagged salad also works if it is on the turn.
- QuantityNo amount is given because the premise is that you have a glut. Reckon on about 1 lb (450 g) of trimmed leaves for two to three servings — lettuce cooks down very sharply, so start with far more than looks sensible.
- The twelve-minute boilLonger than modern practice would suggest for a leaf, though a long boil will leach some of the bitterness out of bolted lettuce. Salt the water if you like. Drain and refresh under cold water if you want to keep the colour green.
- Drying is the hingeSqueeze the boiled lettuce hard in a clean cloth or press it in a sieve. Any water left behind will steam in the pan instead of frying, and the lettuce will stay grey and slack rather than turning colour in the butter.
- A thimbleful of flourAbout a teaspoon. It is a binder, not a proper roux — the aim is a loose creamed vegetable, not a thick béchamel. Slake it in a little cold milk before it goes in or it will lump.
- Butter"A lump" means roughly 1 to 2 tablespoons for a pound of leaves. This is the main seasoning in the dish, so do not be mean with it.
- The final simmerFifteen minutes over low heat, stirring, with more milk added as it tightens. Use a heavy pan; the mixture is thick and catches easily. Grated nutmeg is a common Belgian and Dutch addition to creamed greens and suits this well.
- ServingIntended as a side dish with meat, in the place a purée of spinach would take. It is also good spooned over toast or under a poached egg.
Cooked lettuce reads oddly to modern eyes, but it was standard kitchen-garden economy across northern Europe: a lettuce bed comes in all at once, bolts in warm weather, and turns bitter within days. Treating the surplus as a pot-herb rather than a salad is the older habit — lettuce was cooked in Roman and medieval kitchens as a matter of course. This particular book belongs to a specific moment: The Belgian Cook Book was assembled by Mrs. Brian Luck in 1915 from recipes contributed by Belgians who had fled to Britain after the German invasion, and is generally said to have been sold in aid of refugee relief. The domestic frugality running through it — use the bitter leaves, moisten with flour and milk, stretch a little butter a long way — was already the character of Belgian home cooking, and the war gave it a sharper edge for British readers facing shortages of their own.