No. 2746

Green Peas with Braised Lettuces

Petits Pois aux Laitues Braisees

Blanch and braise fifteen lettuce heads; drain them to pare, fold and trim evenly; put them back into the sautoir and pour over a few spoonfuls of half-glaze (No. 400) so as to be able to heat them up. At the last moment dress them in a circle on a dish, alternating each one with a thin bread-crumb crust fried in butter and then glazed with a brush. In the hollow of the circle dress a garnishing of small green peas cooked in salted water and simply finished with a piece of fresh butter.

← No. 2745 Green Peas, Parisian Style—Small Beans, Peas & Lentils No. 2747 Green Peas with Shredded Lettuces →

For the Modern Kitchen

A banquet garnish from Ranhofer's Delmonico kitchen, written in the shorthand of a brigade that had stock and demi-glace on hand at all times. Scaled down and read plainly, it is braised lettuce ringed with fried croûtes around a mound of buttered peas.

Half-glazeRanhofer's No. 400 is demi-glace: brown sauce reduced with stock until it coats a spoon. A few spoonfuls of good reduced veal or beef stock, thickened slightly, does the same work here. Without it the lettuces are bland and the dish has no gloss.
SautoirA straight-sided shallow pan, not a deep pot. It matters because the lettuces braise in a thin layer of liquid and must sit flat in one layer.
Fifteen headsThat is service for a large table. Scaled down, use one small head of romaine or Boston lettuce per person.
Blanch and braiseDrop the trimmed heads in boiling salted water for two to three minutes, refresh in cold water, then squeeze gently dry. Braise covered in stock with a little butter, 20 to 30 minutes at a bare simmer, until the ribs give no resistance. The blanching removes bitterness and makes the leaves foldable.
Pare, fold and trimAfter braising, press out the liquid, cut away the coarse butt, then fold each head over on itself into a neat oblong and square the ends. This is what makes the ring look deliberate rather than collapsed.
The bread-crumb crustsThin slices of crustless bread fried in butter until pale gold, then brushed to glaze; the recipe does not say with what, and a little meat glaze or demi-glace serves. Fry them at the last moment; brushed too early they soften.
The peasPetits pois: the smallest peas, boiled in salted water only until they lose their raw taste, then drained and rolled in cold butter off the heat. Frozen petits pois need two to three minutes and are closer to the original than large fresh peas. Overcooking turns them grey and floury.
TimingBoth components can be braised and boiled ahead and reheated. The reheat is the point of returning the lettuces to the pan with demi-glace, and it should be brief; a second long cooking makes them slimy.

A Little History

The recipe comes from Charles Ranhofer's The Epicurean (1894), the enormous compendium of his three decades as chef at Delmonico's in New York, where dishes were catalogued by number so a cook could chase a cross-reference to the stock or sauce required. Petits pois aux laitues braisées belongs to the French classical repertoire of vegetable garnishes built around new peas and lettuce, two crops that arrive together in spring, and the pairing is old enough in French cooking that lettuce turns up with peas in petits pois à la française as well, though there it is shredded into a chiffonade rather than braised — as Ranhofer's own next entry, No. 2747, "Green Peas with Shredded Lettuces", shows. The fried bread croûtes glazed with a brush are pure nineteenth-century service: they lift the ring off the plate, give a contrast of texture, and catch the light on a long banquet table. Ranhofer's habit of specifying fifteen heads rather than a number of servings is a reminder that the book was written for a professional kitchen dressing platters, not for a household cooking dinner for four.