Lettuce à la crème.—Well wash three or four good-sized cabbage lettuces, trim them, and remove all faded or discoloured leaves, and blanch them for eight or ten minutes in fast boiling water; then rinse in cold water, dry them well, and cut them in quarters or eight parts, according to size; now lay them in a clean pan with 2oz. of butter, a dust each of white pepper and salt, and a tiny pinch of caster sugar; let this all simmer together very gently at the side of the stove for two to three hours, stirring it pretty often with a delicately clean wooden spoon. When they are quite tender stir in the yolks of two eggs beaten up with rather more than half a gill of good cream or new milk, and when this is quite hot (mind it does not boil) serve on a hot dish, garnished with fleurons of puff paste. Cos lettuce may be cooked in the same way, but take rather less time.
— stewed.—Trim, blanch, rinse, and dry them as before, put either some slices of fat bacon or 2oz. of well-clarified dripping in a pan, lay the lettuces (halved) on this with an onion, and some sprays of parsley, and pour in sufficient unskimmed stock to cover it all, lay a buttered paper on top, and simmer it for two hours till the lettuce is reduced to a glaze; then lift out the lettuces on to a hot dish, skim all of the liquid very carefully, add it to some nice brown sauce, pour this over them, and serve. If liked, after blanching and drying the lettuces, some nice forcemeat of any kind may be introduced between the leaves, the whole tied neatly into shape, and finished off as in the preceding recipe. Lettuces are nice if minced rather finely after blanching