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Sweetbreads, Cold, to Re-Cook
Cut the cold sweetbreads into neat pieces. Stew them gently in strong brown gravy till they are quite hot throughout; place them on a dish, pour the gravy over them, and garnish with fried sippets.
A leftovers recipe from the era when a blanched, pressed sweetbread was a standing item in the larder. It assumes you already have both cooked sweetbreads and a pot of proper brown gravy on hand.
- What a sweetbread isThe thymus (throat) or pancreas (heart or stomach sweetbread) of a calf or lamb, not a bread and not a gland you will find in most supermarkets. Order from a butcher; veal heart sweetbreads are the prized cut and the easiest to slice neatly.
- "Strong brown gravy" is not gravy granulesIn a book of this period the term generally means a reduced brown sauce built on browned bones and vegetables with stock, along the lines of an espagnole or a well-reduced veal jus. A thin packet gravy will leave the dish watery and salty; use a concentrated homemade brown stock reduced until it coats a spoon.
- SippetsSmall triangles or fingers of bread fried in butter or clarified fat until crisp, arranged around the edge of the dish. Fry them at the last moment and drain them, or they soften in the gravy.
- The hinge: gentle heatSweetbreads are delicate and already cooked. Bring the gravy to a bare simmer, slip the pieces in, and hold them just long enough to heat through. Boiling makes them squeak and turn granular.
- Heat through properlyCooked offal reheated from cold should reach a good steaming heat all the way to the centre, not merely be warmed at the surface. Ten minutes at a bare simmer for half-inch pieces is a fair guide; a thermometer reading of 74C/165F takes the guesswork out.
- Storage assumptionThe original was written for a cold larder used within a day. Cooked sweetbreads should be refrigerated and used within two days, and reheated once only.
- YieldNot stated. Allow about 4 oz (110 g) of cooked sweetbread per person as a light entree, with two or three sippets each.
Sweetbreads occupied an odd, respectable middle ground in Victorian and Edwardian cooking: among the more prized and expensive offal, delicate enough to be served as an entree at a formal dinner, usually blanched, pressed under a weight, then larded, egged and crumbed, or braised. Because that preparation produced firm cold slices, a main sweetbread recipe might be followed by a short note on re-cooking what was left, exactly as here. Cassell's was compiled for households where nothing dressed once was thrown away and where a stockpot of brown gravy stood ready to absorb yesterday's meat; the fried sippet, generally traced to the medieval sop of bread under sauced meat, was the standard garnish that turned a plate of remains into something presentable. Sweetbreads fell out of general British and American use after the mid-twentieth century, partly through changing taste in offal and partly through BSE-era restrictions on certain bovine tissues, which is why they now read as a restaurant item rather than a way of using up scraps.