diff --git a/src/hpack-enc.c b/src/hpack-enc.c
index 73a5fd167..dd0d0ab24 100644
--- a/src/hpack-enc.c
+++ b/src/hpack-enc.c
@@ -114,6 +114,12 @@ int hpack_encode_header(struct buffer *out, const struct ist n,
 		out->area[len++] = 0x58; // literal with indexing -- name="cache-control" (idx 24)
 	else if (isteq(n, ist("content-length")))
 		out->area[len++] = 0x5c; // literal with indexing -- name="content-length" (idx 28)
+	else if (likely(n.len < 127 && len + 1 + n.len <= size)) {
+		out->area[len++] = 0x00;      /* literal without indexing -- new name */
+		out->area[len++] = n.len;     /* single-byte length encoding */
+		ist2bin(out->area + len, n);
+		len += n.len;
+	}
 	else if (len_to_bytes(n.len) && len + 1 + len_to_bytes(n.len) + n.len <= size) {
 		out->area[len++] = 0x00;      /* literal without indexing -- new name */
 		len = hpack_encode_len(out->area, len, n.len);