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Lettuce (Obtainable all the year)
Lettuce is obtainable all the year, and is especially valuable during the winter and spring, when other green vegetables in market command a high price. Although containing but little nutriment, it is useful for the large quantity of water and potash salts that it contains, and assists in stimulating the appetite. Curly lettuce is of less value than Tennis Ball, but makes an effective garnish. Lettuce should be separated by removing leaves from stalk (discarding wilted outer leaves), washed, kept in cold water until crisp, drained, and so placed on a towel that water may drop from leaves. A bag made from white mosquito netting is useful for drying lettuce. Wash lettuce leaves, place in bag, and hang in lower part of ice-box to drain. Wire baskets are used for the same purpose. Arrange lettuce for serving in nearly its original shape. Leeks on Toast Wash and trim leeks, cook in boiling salted water until soft, and drain. Arrange on pieces of buttered toast and pour over melted butter, seasoned with salt and pepper.
Two things are running together here: a reference note on handling lettuce, and a stray recipe for leeks on toast that the typesetter tucked onto the end of the entry. Both are usable.
- The hinge: dry leaves or nothing sticksThe whole point of the netting bag and the wire basket is that dressing slides off wet lettuce and pools at the bottom of the bowl. A salad spinner does the same job in thirty seconds; if you soak the leaves to crisp them first, spin them twice.
- Tennis Ball lettuceAn old butterhead variety, small and loose-headed, still sold as an heirloom seed. It is generally regarded as an ancestor of the Boston type, and modern Boston or Bibb lettuce behaves much the same way. "Curly lettuce" here means the frilly leaf types used for edging a platter.
- "Lower part of the ice-box"The cold air in a block-ice refrigerator sank, so the lower part was the cold, damp end of the cabinet and a sensible place to let leaves drip. The modern equivalent is the crisper drawer; leaves loosely wrapped in a towel there will hold three or four days.
- Potash saltsPeriod shorthand for potassium compounds. The nutritional claim is thin by modern standards but not wrong: lettuce is largely water, with useful potassium and, in the darker leaves, vitamin K and folate that the book had no way of knowing about.
- Leeks: trim and wash properlyGrit hides between the layers. Split the trimmed leeks lengthwise and fan them under running water before boiling, or slice after cooking and expect sand.
- Cooking the leeks"Until soft" is 10 to 15 minutes in boiling salted water for whole medium leeks, tested with a knife tip at the thick end. Drain them well and press gently in the colander, or the toast collapses.
- YieldFigure two medium leeks and one slice of toast per person as a side dish. A little lemon or a grating of hard cheese over the melted butter would not be out of keeping with the period.
Fannie Farmer's lettuce entry belongs to the moment when American salad became a year-round expectation rather than a summer one. By the turn of the century, rail freight and glass forcing-houses were moving lettuce into Northern markets in winter, which is exactly the selling point the first sentence makes. The washing-bag of white mosquito netting is a reminder of how much salad work was manual before the wire basket, let alone the spinner: leaves were hung to drain. Leeks on toast, appended here almost as an afterthought, reflects the era's habit of serving a plainly boiled vegetable on buttered toast with melted butter poured over: you are reading a turn-of-the-century American vegetable section.