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Lettuce and Peas
(Provincial France.) Parboil 4 heads of lettuce in 1 quart of broth,--which can be used as soup,--remove the centres and fill with green peas, a little chopped onion, and a little flour. Tie these neatly, cover with 1/2 pint white stock, and simmer for an hour. Untie, arrange on toast, and pour the sauce over, adding salt and pepper.
A short French braise written for cooks who already knew the technique, so the quantities are loose and the hinge — how to get a lettuce to hold a filling — goes unexplained. Read it as four stuffed lettuce parcels braised in stock.
- The lettuce to buyThis wants firm, elongated heads with a tight heart: romaine (cos), or small sucrine types. Modern butterhead collapses and iceberg leaks water; neither will tie.
- Parboil, then squeezeA minute or two in the simmering broth is enough to make the leaves pliable. Lift them out, refresh under cold water, and press the water out gently with your hands, or the finished parcels will be soupy.
- "Remove the centres"Cut out the core and the tight inner heart, leaving the outer leaves attached at the base as a cup. Fold the leaves up and over the filling and tie with kitchen string around the middle — the string is what holds the parcel through an hour of simmering.
- PeasFresh shelled peas were assumed. Frozen peas, thawed but not cooked, work well; they were already blanched before freezing and will finish in the braise. Canned peas will turn to paste.
- The flourNo quantity is given. A teaspoon or so per head, tossed with the peas and onion, is a reasonable reading: it binds the filling and lightly thickens the braising liquid. More than that makes the sauce pasty.
- White stockA pale, unroasted veal or chicken stock, unsalted or barely salted. Half a pint is 1 cup in American measure. The recipe says to cover the parcels with it, so use a pan just wide enough to hold the four heads snugly.
- The hourA full hour at a bare simmer, covered, is not a mistake here — lettuce ribs need it to go silky, and the peas inside are protected by the leaves. Keep it at a tremble; a hard boil will shred the parcels.
- FinishingIf the sauce is thin after untying, reduce it briskly for a minute or two before pouring over. Season at the end: the braising stock concentrates and early salting overshoots.
- YieldFour parcels, one per person on a slice of toast, as a light first course or a vegetable dish alongside roast meat. The recipe notes that the quart of parboiling broth can be used as soup.
Braised lettuce is one of the older French vegetable treatments — laitues braisées appear in nineteenth-century French cookery as a garnish for veal and poultry — and stuffing the head is the provincial extension of the idea, using up the first peas of the season and thickening them with a spoonful of flour rather than butter or cream. The frugality is the point: the parboiling broth is explicitly reclaimed as soup, and a single cup of stock feeds four. The flour has no measure and the tying no explanation — both, apparently, were taken to be obvious.