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SWEETBREADS (a la Maitre d'Hotel)
Soak, blanch, cool, and trim the sweetbreads in the usual way. Lay them in a saucepan, and barely cover them with good veal gravy. Let them stew gently until done enough. Lay them on a hot dish, and have the sauce ready prepared to pour over them. This sauce may be made as follows. Take half a pint of good melted butter. Let it simmer a few minutes, and skim it well, then stir into it a dessert-spoonful of chopped parsley, the strained juice of a small lemon, and a little salt and cayenne. Take the sauce from the fire, let it cool a minute, stir into it until dissolved a small piece of fresh butter, and it will be ready for use. Time to simmer the sweetbread, three-quarters of an hour. Sufficient, a fine large sweetbread for two persons. Probable cost, 1s. 6d. to 5s.
A straightforward Victorian braise, but two phrases in it mean something other than what a modern cook would assume: "melted butter" and "in the usual way." Sort those out and the dish is easy.
- "Melted butter" is a sauce, not melted butterIn nineteenth-century English cookery melted butter means a white sauce of butter, flour and water or stock, roughly a tablespoon each of butter and flour to half a pint of liquid, simmered and skimmed. That is why the recipe tells you to simmer and skim it, then mount it with a further knob of fresh butter off the heat.
- Half a pintAn imperial half-pint is 10 fl oz, about 1¼ US cups. That is a generous quantity of sauce for one sweetbread; half the amount serves two comfortably.
- "The usual way"Soak the sweetbreads in several changes of cold water for two to three hours until they lose their pinkness, cover with cold water, bring slowly to a boil, drain and plunge into iced water, then peel away the membrane and gristle. Pressing them flat between two plates with a weight for an hour firms the texture and is recommended in some period sources, though this recipe does not ask for it.
- Which glandButchers of the period distinguished the throat sweetbread (thymus, long and irregular) from the heart or stomach sweetbread (pancreas, round and compact). The heart sweetbread is the prized one and the "fine large sweetbread" intended here. Order ahead; most supermarkets do not stock either.
- TimingThree-quarters of an hour applies to a whole unpressed gland in barely simmering gravy. A pressed sweetbread, or one cut into scallops, is done in 15 to 20 minutes and turns woolly if held longer. Cook until a skewer meets no resistance and the interior is firm and opaque.
- Veal gravyThe original assumes a stockpot of reduced veal stock on hand. Unsalted veal or light chicken stock does the job; avoid anything heavily salted, since the sweetbreads sit in it uncovered and it concentrates.
- Yield and costOne large sweetbread serves two as a first course, as the recipe states. The quoted 1s. 6d. to 5s. is a wide spread, though the entry gives no reason for it.
Sweetbreads occupied an odd position in Victorian cookery: cheap enough to appear in a general household dictionary, delicate enough to be served à la maître d'hôtel, that is, with the standard treatment of parsley, lemon juice and butter. The name is often traced to the Old English bræd in the sense of flesh rather than to bread, though the derivation is uncertain and the origin of "sweet" in particular remains unexplained. What is clear is that the soaking, blanching, pressing and gentle braise drill the whole grammar of handling delicate offal, and a cook who could manage them could manage brains, calf's head and the rest of the white meats that filled English entrée courses well into the twentieth century.