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Sweetbreads
Clean and soak 2 pairs of sweetbreads in cold water for an hour or more, then put them in pan with enough water to cover them, and cook them for 20 minutes. Take them out and place them in cold water for 2 or 3 minutes to make them firm. Dry thoroughly, rub them with tablespoon of Crisco. Sprinkle with salt and pepper and place in a pan with brown sauce. Cook in hot oven for 20 minutes. Baste often with the sauce.
A straightforward two-stage treatment — blanch, then roast in sauce — that still works, provided you handle the membrane at the right moment.
- Peel while warmThe recipe skips the step that matters most. After the 20-minute simmer and the cold-water firming, pull away the outer membrane and any tubes or fat while the sweetbreads are still slightly warm; once fully cold the membrane clings and tears the meat.
- Which sweetbreadsUnqualified "sweetbreads" in a book of this date most likely means veal. A pair is normally sold as the round "heart" or belly sweetbread (the pancreas) together with the longer "throat" piece (the thymus). Order from a butcher; they are rarely in a supermarket case. Two pairs is likely to be somewhere around 2 lb, though weights vary a good deal.
- Freshness and soakingSweetbreads are highly perishable and should be cooked within a day of purchase. The hour in cold water draws out blood; change the water two or three times until it runs clear.
- Hot ovenThe book gives no temperatures; "hot oven" in period usage is roughly 400-450F. At 20 minutes with frequent basting the sauce will reduce and glaze rather than just heat through.
- CriscoThis book was published to promote Crisco, so shortening appears where an older cook would have used butter. A tablespoon of butter or a neutral oil does the same job of helping the surface brown.
- Brown sauceAn espagnole or a reduced brown veal stock thickened with a browned roux — enough to come partway up the sweetbreads in the pan, about a cup for this quantity. A dry sherry or Madeira finish is traditional and welcome.
- YieldTwo pairs serves four as a main course, six as an entree course in the older sense. Serve with the pan sauce spooned over, on toast or with peas.
Sweetbreads — the thymus and sometimes the pancreas of a calf or lamb — were a luxury organ meat in Anglo-American cooking well into the twentieth century, appearing at ladies' luncheons, wedding breakfasts and invalid trays alike, prized for their delicacy rather than any richness. The origin of the name is disputed; one common explanation, offered more often than it is demonstrated, holds that it has nothing to do with bread or with sugar but derives from an Old English usage in which *bread* could mean a piece or morsel, with *sweet* distinguishing it from the stronger-flavoured offal. The two-step method here, blanching then finishing in a brown sauce, is often said to follow French practice as it reached English kitchens in the nineteenth century. What dates this particular version is the tablespoon of Crisco: *A Calendar of Dinners* was written by Marion Harris Neil and issued by Procter & Gamble in the 1910s to demonstrate that their new hydrogenated vegetable shortening could stand in for butter and lard throughout an entire year of menus, which is why the fat is named by brand in a recipe that otherwise gives no brand at all.