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Sweetbread Kromeskies
Prepare the sweetbreads as for croquettes (see SWEETBREADS, CROQUETTES OF). Let the preparation get quite cold, then divide it into equal portions, rolled to the shape of a cork. Place each one of these upon cold boiled fat bacon which has been cut into thin slices of a size that will just envelop the mince. Set these on a dish in a cool place till wanted. Dip them separately into frying batter, and fry them in hot fat till they are crisp and lightly browned. Drain them on a wire sieve covered with paper, pile them on a napkin, then garnish with fried parsley, and serve immediately. Time to fry the kromeskies, three or four minutes.
A late-Victorian way of using up a cooked sweetbread mixture: croquette paste wrapped in bacon, battered and deep-fried. Everything depends on the filling being cold and firm before it goes near the fat.
- The hinge: chill hardThe croquette mixture must be refrigerated until genuinely solid, not merely cool. A soft centre will burst the bacon and the batter in the fryer and the fat will foam over.
- Sweetbreads todayVeal or lamb sweetbreads (thymus or pancreas), ordered ahead from a butcher. Soak in several changes of cold water until the water runs clear, blanch, cool under a weight, then peel the membrane before making the croquette paste. They must be fully cooked in that earlier preparation.
- "Cold boiled fat bacon"A fat cut such as streaky will serve, simmered a few minutes and cooled, cut as thin as you can manage. Boiling first draws off salt and makes the rashers pliable enough to wrap without tearing; raw bacon shrinks and unwraps in the fat.
- Frying batterA plain flour-and-water or beer batter, thick enough to coat the back of a spoon. Keep it cold and use it promptly, and make sure the bacon parcel is dry so the batter grips.
- Fat temperature350-375F. Three to four minutes at that heat browns the batter and heats the centre through; cooler fat gives a greasy, pale coating and a cold middle.
- Fried parsleyDry the sprigs thoroughly, then dip them in the fat for only a few seconds until they stop hissing and turn brilliant green. Wet parsley spits violently in hot fat, and a second too long turns it black.
- Draining and servingThe wire sieve lined with paper is still the right method; a rack over a tray works as well as a napkin-lined dish. These go soft within minutes, so fry in small batches and serve at once.
- YieldA pair of veal sweetbreads should give roughly a dozen cork-shaped kromeskies, about enough for four as a savoury or first course, though the recipe itself specifies no quantity.
Kromeskies are the English spelling of a dish generally traced to Poland and Russia o Polish kromka, a slice or small piece, though that derivation is often said rather than settled and they entered grand Anglo-French cookery in the nineteenth century, where menus listed them as kromeskis. What distinguishes them from a croquette is the bacon jacket and the batter: a croquette is crumbed, a kromeski is wrapped and dipped. Sweetbreads were prized in Victorian kitchens as a delicate, expensive offal, and a book like Cassell's gives the dish for a cook working with cooked sweetbread mince. The dish belongs to the class of small hot savouries served as an entree or after the roast, when a household expected a great many courses and each had to be small.