No. 2753

Lettuces with half-Glaze Sauce—Stuffed

Laitues Farcies a la Sauce Demi-Glace

Blanch some pared and well-washed lettuces for ten to twelve minutes; drain on a sieve, and press them singly to extract all the water, then double them over and range them in a sautoir lined with fat pork; season and moisten with broth (No. 194a), cover with buttered paper and cook for one hour on a slow fire. Drain the lettuces once more, open them and stuff with veal quenelle forcemeat (No. 92), closing them up again carefully; return to a clean sautoir one beside the other and pour over a little gravy (No. 404); cook once more for twenty minutes on a slow fire, drain and shape them prettily. Dress on a dish in a circle, and cover over with a little half-glaze sauce (No. 413).

← No. 2752 Lettuces Stuffed and Fried Cabbages & Greens No. 2754 Lettuces with Thickened Gravy—Braised →

For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer writes for a brigade with stockpots already going, so this reads as a short note rather than a full recipe. Nearly everything unstated is in the cross-references, and the lettuce itself needs the right variety to survive the treatment.

Which lettuceThis wants firm cos (romaine) heads, or the tight little butterhead sold as Boston or Bibb. Loose-leaf and iceberg will not hold together through blanching, pressing, folding and two braises.
Blanching and pressingTen to twelve minutes in boiling water is for whole trimmed heads; small ones need less. The pressing matters more than the timing — squeeze each head between the palms or in a clean towel until it is a compact pad, or the braising liquid will be watery and the stuffing will slide out.
SautoirA sautoir is a straight-sided shallow pan with a lid, in effect a modern sauté pan or a wide braiser. "Lined with fat pork" means the bottom is paved with thin sheets of fresh pork fatback or unsmoked barding fat, which keeps the lettuce off the metal and enriches the liquid.
Slow fireA bare tremble, no visible boil. On a modern burner that is the lowest setting with a diffuser; a covered pan in a low oven holds the heat steadier, though Ranhofer specifies the fire, not the oven.
Buttered paperA round of parchment cut to the pan's diameter, buttered on one side and laid directly on the lettuces. It slows evaporation and stops the exposed tops drying in the shallow liquid.
The cross-referenced numbersNo. 194 a is the broth called for, No. 404 the gravy, and No. 413 the half-glaze sauce of the title, a reduction of espagnole and brown stock. A good unsalted veal or chicken stock stands in for the first two; for the sauce, reduce brown veal stock with a little madeira to a glossy nap. Season at the end, since all three elements reduce.
Veal quenelle forcemeatNo. 92 is veal pounded with a panada and butter or cream, sieved, and lightened with egg. A food processor does the pounding and sieving work in a minute if the meat and bowl are cold. Stuff sparingly — the forcemeat swells during the second braise and will split the leaves.
TimingAn hour of braising plus twenty minutes finishing is a long haul, but the lettuce is being reduced deliberately to something silky rather than kept crisp. The second stage also sets the forcemeat, which should be cooked through — 160F at the centre for a ground veal mixture.
YieldReckon roughly one small head or half a large romaine per person as a garnish or first course; the recipe itself gives no quantities.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer ran the kitchen at Delmonico's in New York for over thirty years, and The Epicurean (1894) is essentially the house's working repertoire set down in French-service order — which is why the recipe is a paragraph of cross-references rather than a standalone set of instructions. Braised stuffed lettuce belongs to a family of French garnitures in which a bland, watery vegetable is cooked to submission in stock and fat and then given body by a forcemeat: the same logic produces stuffed cucumbers, stuffed onions and braised celery hearts. Demi-glace — literally half-glaze — is brown sauce reduced by half toward a meat glaze, the standard finishing sauce of the period and the reason so many Escoffier-era vegetable dishes taste of veal. The neighbouring entries in this section, for fried stuffed lettuce and lettuce with thickened gravy, show how thoroughly the nineteenth-century restaurant kitchen treated salad greens as a cooked vegetable.