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Fowl, Duck, Game, Hare: Lettuce
No. 170. Lattughe al sugo (Lettuce) Ingredients: Lettuce, Parmesan, bacon, stock, butter, croûtons of bread, gravy.
Take off the outside leaves of a lettuce, blanch and drain them well. Put on each leaf a mixture of grated Parmesan, salt, little bits of chopped bacon or ham, add a little good stock, cover over with buttered paper, and cook in a hot oven for five minutes.
Then drain off the stock and roll up each leaf with the bacon, &c., put them on croûtons of fried bread and pour some good thick gravy over them.
No. 171. Lattughe farcite alla Genovese (Lettuce) Ingredients: Lettuce, forcemeat of fowl or veal, ham, Espagnole sauce.
Prepare a lettuce as above, and spread on each leaf a spoonful of forcemeat of fowl or veal, add a little cooked ham chopped up, roll up the leaves, and cook as above. Drain them on a cloth, arrange them neatly on a dish, and pour some good Espagnole sauce (No. 1) over them.
No. 172. Funghi cappelle infarcite (Stuffed Mushrooms) Ingredients: Mushrooms, bread, stock, garlic, parsley, salt, Parmesan, butter, eggs, cream.
Choose a dozen good fresh mushrooms, take off the stalks and put the tops into a saucepan with a little butter. See that they lie bottom upwards.
Then cut up and mix together half the stalks of the mushrooms, a little bread crumb soaked in gravy, the merest scrap of garlic and a little chopped parsley. Put this into a separate saucepan and add to it two eggs, half a gill of cream, salt, and two tablespoonsful of grated Parmesan. Mix well so as to get a smooth paste and fill in the cavities of the mushrooms with it.
Then add a little more butter, strew some bread crumbs over each mushroom, and cook in the oven for ten to fifteen minutes.
No. 173. Verdure miste (Macédoine of Vegetables) Ingredients: Cauliflower, carrots, celery, spinach, butter, cream, pepper, Parmesan.
Boil some carrots, cauliflower, spinach, and celery (all cut up) in water. Then put them in layers in a buttered china mould, and between each layer add a little cream, pepper, and a little grated Parmesan and Cheddar. Fill the mould in this manner, and put it in the oven for half an hour, so that the vegetables may cook without adhering to the mould. Turn out and serve.
Four Italian vegetable dishes, printed here under a fowl-and-game heading because in this book the vegetable entries trail after the meat courses they were meant to accompany. The measurements are mostly left to judgement, so the notes below fix the few numbers that matter.
- The hinge: blanch and dry the leavesCooked stuffed lettuce lives or dies on the leaves being pliable and thoroughly drained. Thirty to sixty seconds in boiling salted water, then cold water, then pressed flat on a towel; any water left in them dilutes the stuffing and prevents the rolls holding their shape.
- Which lettuceThe recipe does not specify a variety. A large cos or romaine, whose long outer leaves are firm enough to roll, suits the method best; small, soft butterhead or Little Gem hearts are harder to work with, and iceberg will not roll.
- "A hot oven"'A hot oven' -- no temperatures are given in the book; a hot oven of the period corresponds roughly to 425-450F. The five minutes given for the lettuce rolls is only to melt the cheese and set the filling, so the heat needs to be high; for the stuffed mushrooms at ten to fifteen minutes a more moderate 375-400F suits the custard-like filling better.
- Half a gill of creamAn English gill is a quarter of a pint, so half a gill is about 2½ fl oz, or 5 tablespoons. With two eggs and two tablespoons of Parmesan that gives a loose paste; add the cream gradually and stop when it will sit in a mushroom cap without running out.
- Forcemeat, and the raw-egg questionNo. 171's forcemeat of fowl or veal is raw ground meat, and five minutes in the oven will not cook it through. Poach or sauté the forcemeat mixture first, or lengthen the baking to 20–25 minutes with the rolls covered, until the filling reaches 165F. The egg in the mushroom filling is fine as written, since it bakes.
- Espagnole and "good thick gravy"Espagnole and 'good thick gravy' -- No. 1 is the book's Espagnole, the classic brown sauce built on a brown roux and brown stock and long simmered and skimmed. A well-reduced brown chicken or veal stock, lightly thickened, does the same job here. The 'good thick gravy' of No. 170 most likely means a reduced meat stock of the same sort rather than pan drippings.
- Buttered paperA round of parchment brushed with butter, laid directly on the food. It keeps the surface from drying while allowing steam out, which foil does not; foil pressed on top will steam the cheese into a puddle.
- The vegetable mouldNo temperature is given; a moderate oven of about 350F for half an hour will heat the mould through, but nothing here binds the layers, so expect a soft turn-out. Cook the vegetables only just tender, drain them hard, and let the mould stand five minutes before inverting.
- YieldNos. 170 and 171 will give roughly 8-12 rolls, enough for about four as a first course. The dozen mushrooms serve about four; the macedoine serves four to six as a side.
The Cook's Decameron (1901) was Mrs W. G. Waters's collection of Italian cookery, framed after Boccaccio as ten days of dinners told among friends — among the English books of its date that treated Italian regional food seriously rather than as a curiosity. Nos. 170 and 171 belong to a real and surviving Ligurian tradition: lattughe ripiene, lettuce leaves wrapped around a forcemeat of veal, brains, borage and Parmesan, are still cooked in Genoa and usually served in broth rather than under a brown sauce. The Espagnole here, and the fried croûtons, are the French finishing that an English cookery writer of 1901 would have assumed any respectable dish required. The dishes also show the period's habit of treating vegetables as a vehicle for meat, cheese and stock rather than as food in their own right — even the mushrooms are bound with egg, cream and Parmesan, and the macédoine is layered with cheese until it is nearly a gratin.