No. 2816

Cos Lettuce a la Rudini-Stuffed

Romaine Farcie a la Rudini

Remove the green stalk leaves from six cos lettuces; cut each one lengthwise in two, remove the centers or hard parts, and blanch in boiling salted water; drain properly, and lay them on a cloth; suppress all the hard part from the leaves and stuff each half with veal quenelle forcemeat (No. 92), into which mix the insides of four cooked and skinned sausages, also a coffeespoonful of finely cut-up chives. Roll the romaines into muff-shapes, wrap them around with fat pork, then braise and drain; strain and reduce the stock with espagnole sauce (No. 414), and pour this over after it has been well reduced.

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For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer writes for a brigade with stockpots and mother sauces already going, so the recipe reads as a sketch. The work is in the assembly: blanched romaine halves become wrappers for a sausage-enriched veal forcemeat, barded and braised.

Cos lettuce is romaineThe two names are interchangeable; "cos" is the older English term. Six heads, halved, gives twelve rolls, which serves six as a garnish or side and four as a light main course.
Blanch briefly, then dry hardThirty to sixty seconds in well-salted boiling water is enough to make the leaves pliable; longer and they collapse into rags. Refresh in ice water, then press between towels, because water left in the leaves will thin the braising stock and prevent the forcemeat from setting.
Veal quenelle forcemeatRanhofer's No. 92 is a veal quenelle forcemeat: lean veal worked with a panada and butter, bound with egg and sieved. A food processor does the pounding and sieving in one step: cold veal, cold butter, a little egg white and cream, worked only until smooth. Keep everything refrigerator-cold or the mixture breaks.
The sausages"Cooked and skinned sausages" here means a plain fresh pork sausage, poached or fried through and the meat crumbled out of the casing. Something highly spiced or smoked will dominate the veal.
CoffeespoonfulA coffeespoon in this period is roughly half a teaspoon. For twelve rolls that is a whisper of chives; a full teaspoon or more is defensible.
"Muff-shapes" and the fat porkRoll each stuffed half into a short cylinder open at the ends, like a hand muff. The wrapping is thinly sliced fatback or unsmoked salt pork, which bastes the lean forcemeat during braising and holds the roll shut. Thin-cut pancetta or caul fat both work; blanch salt pork first if it is heavily salted.
BraisingRanhofer gives no vessel, temperature or time. Set the rolls seam-side down in a buttered pan, add stock to come halfway up, cover with buttered paper and a lid, and braise gently -- a moderate oven of about 325F works -- for roughly 40 minutes, until the forcemeat reaches 160F at the center, by which point the rolls should slice cleanly.
The sauceEspagnole (No. 414) is a brown roux sauce built on veal stock and mirepoix, simmered for hours. A good reduced brown veal stock, lightly thickened, gives the same effect. Strain the braising liquid, combine, and reduce until it coats a spoon before pouring over.
Removing the bardingRanhofer does not say, but the fat pork is normally lifted off before saucing unless it has crisped attractively. Left on, it reads as greasy under a reduced brown sauce.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer put this in The Epicurean (1894), the compendium of his three decades as chef at Delmonico's in New York, and it shows the house style exactly: a humble vegetable treated with the full apparatus of the classical kitchen, given a proper name, and sent out as a dish in its own right. The dedication "a la Rudini" is often said to nod to Antonio Starabba, Marchese di Rudini, the Italian prime minister of the 1890s, though the connection is not documented. Stuffing and braising lettuce is far older than the name, however; laitues farcies appear throughout French cookery of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, a way of making a course out of leaves too coarse for the salad bowl. The technique of lining the wrapper with a quenelle forcemeat, barding with pork fat, and finishing with espagnole is Carême's grammar as inherited by Ranhofer, and the recipe's terseness is deliberate: it assumes a reader who can turn to No. 92 and No. 414 and already has both on the stove.