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Blanquette Of Lamb's Sweetbreads
Take about eight throat sweetbreads; steep them in water, scald them, and then braise them in a small stewpan with very little moisture; they will be done in about a quarter of an hour; put them on a dish to cool; cut them into scollops, and put into a stewpan containing pure white sauce, toss the whole together till warm, then dish up the blanquette in a conical form, garnish it round with a border of potatoes cut in pretty shapes, and serve.
A nineteenth-century French fricassee in miniature: pale meat, pale sauce, no browning at any stage. The whole point is whiteness, so the hinge is heat control — nothing here should colour or boil hard.
- What a throat sweetbread isThe thymus gland from the neck, long and narrow, as opposed to the rounder "heart" or stomach sweetbread (the pancreas). Butchers rarely distinguish them now; order sweetbreads in advance and expect a mix. Lamb sweetbreads are small and vary a good deal in size, so weigh rather than count: eight may be around a pound, enough for three or four as a course.
- Steeping means several hours"Steep them in water" is not a rinse. Soak in cold water in the refrigerator for 3 to 4 hours, changing the water two or three times, until it runs clear rather than pink. This draws out blood and is what keeps the finished dish white.
- Scald, then peelScalding is a brief blanch — a couple of minutes in barely simmering salted water — after which the sweetbreads firm up enough to strip off the outer membrane and any gristle. Skipping the peel gives a rubbery skin no sauce will disguise.
- Braising with "very little moisture"A shallow pan, a spoonful or two of stock, butter, a lid, the gentlest heat. Fifteen minutes suits small lamb sweetbreads; veal sweetbreads are much larger and need longer. They are done when firm to the finger with no softness at the centre.
- Press them while coolingThe book says only to cool them on a dish. Cooling them under a light weight — a plate with a can on it — is a common technique, and it makes them slice into neat scollops instead of crumbling.
- "Pure white sauce"A velouté: butter and flour cooked without colouring, loosened with veal or chicken stock, finished with cream and lemon. If you use plain béchamel, keep it thin. Either way, warm the sweetbreads through in the sauce — do not let it boil, or the sauce breaks its gloss and the meat tightens.
- The potato borderSmall potatoes turned into barrel or olive shapes, boiled in salted water, arranged around the base of the mound. Cooking them separately and keeping them white is the whole intention; roast or browned potatoes belong to a different dish.
- ServingThe conical mound was a formal-service convention. A shallow warmed bowl with the sauce spooned over works better on a modern table, and the dish must go out hot — reheated sweetbreads in white sauce turn grainy.
Blanquette comes from blanc, white, and names a whole family of French stews defined by what they refuse to do: no browning of the meat, no browned roux, no dark stock. Veal is the familiar version, but the treatment was applied to lamb, chicken and offal alike, and sweetbreads were among the most prized items in the nineteenth-century larder — delicate, expensive, and a standard test of a cook's ability to keep a sauce pale and unbroken. Household books carried a strand of this Franco-English professional cookery alongside plainer fare, partly because Anglo-American writers had been copying from the great French codifiers since Ude and Carême, and partly because a hostess with ambitions was expected to recognise a blanquette on a menu. Sweetbreads have since retreated to restaurant menus in the English-speaking world.