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Calf's Sweetbreads
Calf's sweetbreads should always be soaked for an hour or two in cold water, which must be changed once or twice, then put into boiling water for about ten minutes, till they are firm and round but not hard; take them out and put into cold water again until they are wanted to be dressed. This should be done whether they are intended to be stewed, fried, roasted, baked, or cooked in any other way.
This is the preliminary treatment that every sweetbread recipe in the older books assumes has already been done. It still holds, with two additions the original leaves out: peeling and pressing.
- Which sweetbreadButchers may sell more than one kind: the throat or neck sweetbread and the heart or chest sweetbread are lobes of the thymus, while the pancreas is sold as the stomach or belly sweetbread. The rounder, more compact gland is generally reckoned the better one. It is worth ordering ahead, as many shops do not keep them in the case.
- Buy fresh and work fastSweetbreads are among the most perishable of offal and turn grey and sour quickly. Soak and blanch them the day you buy them, even if the finishing is done the next day.
- The soak is for blood, not saltAn hour or two in cold water, changed once or twice as the original directs, draws out blood and leaves the meat pale. Some cooks add a splash of vinegar or a little salt to the water; plain cold water, changed often, does the job.
- Do not let it boil hardThe original says boiling water for about ten minutes; many cooks prefer to bring the water to a boil and then drop it to a bare simmer, on the grounds that a hard boil can tighten and split the outer membrane. About ten minutes suits a large sweetbread, rather less for a small one.
- Peel while warmThe step the original skips: as soon as they come out of the hot water, pull away the outer membrane, gristle and any fat. It lifts off easily while warm and clings stubbornly once cold.
- Press before dressingAfter the second cold-water bath, lay the sweetbreads between two plates or a tray and a board with a light weight on top and chill an hour. Pressing gives an even thickness that browns properly in the pan and slices cleanly.
- YieldFigure roughly 5 to 8 oz trimmed per person as a main course, rather less as a first course. They lose noticeable weight in trimming, so buy generously.
History: Sweetbreads are the thymus and pancreas of a calf or lamb, and the name appears to have nothing to do with bread or sugar, though its origin is not settled; it is often traced to an older use of bread for a morsel or piece of flesh, with "sweet" taken to mark the mild taste against the strong flavour of liver and kidney. They were prized in nineteenth-century cookery as a delicacy, and the soak-and-blanch was the standing foundation for dozens of preparations, from sweetbreads larded and roasted to sweetbreads in a vol-au-vent. The habit of blanching first and finishing later also suited a kitchen without reliable cold storage, where a perishable delicacy bought in the morning had to be held until dinner.