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Sweetbreads, Cutlets Of
Soak and blanch two or more fine fresh sweetbreads in the usual way. Let them simmer in nicely-flavoured stock for half an hour, and let them cool in the liquor. Drain and dry them in a cloth, and cut them into slices an inch and a quarter across. Dip them into beaten egg and seasoned bread-crumbs, then into clarified butter, and again into bread-crumbs. Pat them into shape, and fry them in hot fat till they are brightly browned. Drain them, pile them on a dish, and pour round, but not upon them, good brown gravy flavoured with mushroom and lemon-juice, or with a glassful of white wine; or white sauce may be served with them. If liked the cutlets may be placed upon a little piece of fried bread of the same shape and size as they are, or slices may be cut from a dressed tongue, and these may be egged, breaded, and fried like the slices of sweetbread. When the latter plan is adopted, the sweetbread cutlets should be laid upon the slices of tongue. Time to fry the cutlets, three or four minutes.
A Victorian entrée that survives largely intact in modern restaurant kitchens: poach, cool under weight, slice, crumb, fry. The double coating is what gives the cutlets their shell, and it is worth doing properly.
- "In the usual way"Cassell's assumes the reader knows the drill: soak the sweetbreads in several changes of cold water for two to three hours until they lose their pinkness, then cover with cold water, bring slowly to a boil, and refresh in ice water. Peel away the outer membrane and any gristle while they are still cool and firm.
- Which sweetbreadVeal thymus (the "throat" or elongated sweetbread) and pancreas (the "heart" or round one) were both sold; the round one is fatter, more tender, and slices more neatly into cutlets. It is usually the heart bread that reaches butchers' counters today. Two good sweetbreads will serve about four as an entrée.
- Cooling in the liquorThis is the hinge. Sweetbreads left to cool in their stock stay moist and firm up enough to slice cleanly. Better still, press them between two plates with a light weight while they cool — that is what makes an inch-and-a-quarter round hold together in the pan.
- Half an hour of simmeringGenerous by current practice for pre-blanched sweetbreads; 15 to 20 minutes at a bare tremble is enough, and hard boiling at any stage will make them grainy. They will get another three or four minutes in the fat.
- The double crumbEgg, crumbs, clarified butter, crumbs. The butter layer is doing the work of a second egg wash and adds flavour to the crust — keep it just liquid, not hot, or it will melt the first coating off. Chill the crumbed cutlets 20 minutes before frying so the shell sets.
- Frying temperature"Hot fat" for a three-to-four-minute fry means something in the region of 350–375°F. Any hotter and the crumbs brown before the interior heats through; any cooler and the coating drinks fat. Shallow frying in an inch of clarified butter or neutral oil works as well as deep.
- Sauce round, not uponPouring gravy over the cutlets softens the crust within a minute. Sauce the plate, sit the cutlets on top, and serve at once. "A glassful of white wine" in a book of this period is usually reckoned at about 2 fl oz, and is better reduced into the gravy than added raw.
- The tongue variant"A dressed tongue" is a whole ox or calf tongue already brined and boiled — the ready-cooked pressed tongue sold at a delicatessen counter is the direct equivalent. Cut it the same diameter as the sweetbread rounds so the two stack neatly.
Sweetbreads occupied a particular place in the nineteenth-century English kitchen: expensive, delicate, and considered suitable for invalids and for the lighter courses of a dinner, which is why Cassell's gives them a number of separate entries. The word has nothing to do with bread or with sugar o to of "bred" is generally traced to an older sense of "bread" meaning a piece of flesh, with "sweet" distinguishing the mild-tasting glands from stronger offal. Shaping them into rounds and calling them "cutlets" is a French-influenced presentation, the same impulse that produced cutlets of chicken, of lobster and of rice: an identical silhouette on the plate, sauced around rather than over. The tongue underneath is a familiar pairing in the large Victorian household, where a dressed tongue sat in the larder for days.