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SWEETBREADS (a la Dauphine)
Take two perfectly-fresh sweetbreads. Let them soak well in water for two hours, changing the water occasionally. Put them into boiling water, and let them simmer gently until they are firm without being hard. Put them in cold water for a few minutes, dry them, and lard them evenly with thin strips of fat bacon. Take a small stewpan which has belonging to it a lid to hold live embers. Butter the inside, and put into it a large carrot sliced and a moderate-sized onion. Lay one or two slices of bacon on the vegetables, then put in the sweetbreads, together with half a pint of strong brown gravy. Sprinkle a little salt over them, and stew with a gentle fire under them and plenty of heat on the top. Baste frequently with the gravy until the sweetbreads are lightly browned. Add more gravy as it is necessary. Trim the sweetbreads neatly, put them on a dish with the bacon under them, strain the gravy upon them, and send dressed sorrel or endive or tomato sauce to table with them. Time to stew the sweetbreads, three-quarters of an hour. Probable cost, 1s. 6d. to 5s. each. Sufficient for a small dish.
A classic braise in a braisière — the lidded pan with a dished cover for hot coals, which a low oven now replaces exactly. Most of the work is in the preparation of the sweetbreads before any braising begins.
- The hinge: firm, not hardThe initial simmer is a blanch, not a cooking. The book gives no time, only 'firm without being hard'; a few minutes at a bare simmer sets the sweetbread so it can be peeled and larded. Boil it hard or long and it turns grainy and tightens, and basting later will not undo that.
- Soaking and peelingThe two hours in changed water draws out blood so the finished sweetbread stays pale. After the blanch and the plunge into cold water, strip the outer membrane and any tubes — the book assumes a cook who knows to do this. Pressing the blanched sweetbreads flat under a plate and a weight for an hour gives neater slices.
- Which sweetbreadA Victorian kitchen at these prices would generally mean veal: the elongated 'throat' sweetbread is the thymus, the round 'heart' or belly sweetbread the pancreas. Lamb sweetbreads are smaller and cook faster. Two veal sweetbreads run roughly 1 to 1.5 lb; the book rates the dish only as 'sufficient for a small dish'.
- The stewpan with the ember lidThat lid held live coals so heat came from above as well as below. A heavy lidded casserole in a moderate oven, around 300-325F, is the nearest modern approximation; take the lid off for the last ten minutes to get the browning the basting is meant to produce.
- MeasuresAn imperial half-pint is 10 fl oz, about 285 ml, so a generous US cup. It should barely come up the sides of the sweetbreads, not cover them — this is a braise, and the liquid reduces to the sauce.
- "Strong brown gravy"A reduced brown veal or beef stock rather than pan drippings, sticky enough to glaze; Victorian brown gravies were meat-and-vegetable reductions, sometimes lightly thickened. Demi-glace or a well-reduced homemade stock works; commercial gravy granules will make the dish salty and dull once it reduces.
- LardingThreading strips of fat bacon or pork back fat through the meat with a larding needle keeps the lean sweetbread moist. Draping thin bacon or barding fat over the top and tying it on achieves most of the same effect with far less trouble.
- Timing and donenessThree-quarters of an hour at a gentle heat is about right for pressed veal sweetbreads; check at 30 minutes. They are done when a skewer meets no resistance and the outside has taken a light glaze.
- To serveSorrel stewed to a purée, braised endive, or tomato sauce. Sorrel and tomato are sharp and endive is bitter, and that is the point against the richness of fat, marrow-like meat. Strain the braising liquid over the sweetbreads, as the recipe directs.
Sweetbreads were among the most expensive things in a Victorian butcher's shop for their size, which may be why Cassell's quotes a price range as wide as 1s. 6d. to 5s. each. Dishes labelled à la Dauphine in nineteenth-century cookery generally signal French court nomenclature attached to a garnish or treatment rather than any fixed formula, and the naming was often loose in English books that borrowed it. The method here is old French braising: the braisière, a pan with a concave lid that held embers so the cook controlled top and bottom heat independently, was in use before enclosed ovens made it redundant. Sorrel — a sharp, oxalic green — was a long-established French accompaniment to rich white offal.