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Lamb Stones and Sweetbread, to Fricassee
Soak three sweetbreads in cold water for three or four hours, and change the water once or twice during that time. Wash and skin some lamb stones, put both them and the sweetbreads into boiling water, and let them boil for ten or fifteen minutes. Throw them into cold water. Cut the lamb stones into slices, press the sweet-breads into shape; if large, they may be divided into halves. Dry them well, dredge a little flour over them, and fry them in boiling fat until they are brightly browned on both sides. A dozen large oysters may be fried with them. Pour off the fat, and add a pint of boiling gravy, half a hundred asparagus-tops, cut into small pieces, a salt-spoonful of salt, half a salt-spoonful of pepper, the eighth of a nutmeg, grated, and four table-spoonfuls of light wine. Simmer very gently for a few minutes. Beat the yolks of three eggs. Draw the gravy to the side of the fire, let it cool for two or three minutes, mix it very gradually with the eggs, pour it back into the saucepan, and stir it until it thickens. It must not boil after the eggs are put in. Serve as hot as possible, and garnish with slices of lemon. Probable cost, uncertain--it varies greatly with the season. Sufficient for six or seven persons.
A Victorian fricassee of offal finished with an egg-yolk liaison. The hinge is the last step: once the yolks go in, the sauce must never reach a boil or it will scramble.
- Lamb stonesThese are lamb testicles, sold as lamb fries or animelles where they are sold at all. A butcher who breaks whole carcasses can usually order them; the thin outer membrane must be slit and peeled off before blanching, which is what "wash and skin" means.
- SweetbreadsVeal or lamb thymus (throat sweetbread) or pancreas (heart sweetbread). The long soak in changed cold water draws out blood and is not optional if you want them pale. The instruction to "press them into shape" after the blanch and the plunge into cold water is usually done in the classical way, flat between two plates under a weight.
- Blanching timeTen to fifteen minutes suits whole veal sweetbreads; lamb sweetbreads and lamb stones, which are much smaller, need only three to five (the recipe blanches the stones whole and slices them after). Overblanching leaves them chalky, and they still have a fry and a simmer to come.
- Salt-spoonfulA saltspoon is about a quarter teaspoon. So roughly 1/4 tsp salt and 1/8 tsp pepper for the whole pint of sauce, which is light seasoning by modern habit; taste at the end.
- Half a hundred asparagus-topsLiterally fifty tips, cut short; that means trimming the tops from fifty spears, i.e. more than a single bunch. Add them to the gravy for only a few minutes so they stay green.
- Boiling gravy and light wine"Gravy" here is unthickened brown veal or chicken stock, a pint (20 fl oz British measure, so 2 1/2 cups). "Light wine" means a light table wine rather than a sweet or fortified one, most likely a dry white; four tablespoons is about 1/4 cup.
- The oystersA dozen large shucked oysters, floured and fried alongside, need well under two minutes. Prolonged heat turns them rubbery, so pull them out and return them to the pan at the very end.
- The liaisonDraw the pan off the heat, slacken the three yolks with a ladleful of the hot sauce, then return the mixture and stir over low heat until it coats the spoon, around 175F. If it simmers it will curdle and no amount of stirring will bring it back.
- YieldThe original claims six or seven; three sweetbreads with fries and asparagus will serve four generously as a main course, or six as a first course with bread.
Sweetbreads and "stones" were standard eighteenth- and nineteenth-century luxury eating, and pairing them appears in English cookery long before Cassell's: Hannah Glasse and her successors give versions of a fricassee of lamb-stones and sweetbreads with much the same architecture of flour, gravy, wine and an egg-yolk thickening. The combination made sense in a household that bought whole young lamb in spring, when both organs and the first asparagus arrived together, which is why the book can only call the cost "uncertain--it varies greatly with the season." The oysters are a period habit rather than a flourish: cheap and abundant in Britain through most of the century, they were dropped into pies, sauces and stews as a savoury extender. Cassell's New Dictionary of Cookery, compiled for late-Victorian middle-class kitchens, still assumed a cook who knew what to do with every part of the animal, and the euphemism "stones" is about as close as it comes to acknowledging squeamishness.