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SWEETBREADS (en Casserole)
Wash, trim, blanch, and lard the sweetbreads, put them into a casserole with just enough rich brown stock to cover them, and a bouquet garni, and stir very gently for thirty to forty minutes. The lift out the sweetbreads and the bouquet, and keep the former hot. Skim off all the fat from the stock, add a gill or so of rich brown sauce of any kind, boil it up sharply in a hot oven, lay in the sweetbreads, sliced with some fried mushrooms, and let all heat well together. Add a dust of pepper and a squeeze of lemon-juice, and serve.
A late-Victorian braise that assumes you know how to handle sweetbreads before you start. The instructions compress several steps into single words, and one of them is almost certainly a printer's error.
- "Stir very gently for thirty to forty minutes"Hard to follow as printed, and possibly a misprint for stew: sweetbreads in barely-covering stock are simmered rather than agitated. Keep the liquid at a bare tremble; a rolling boil shrinks and toughens them.
- CasseroleIn this period the word usually denotes a lidded stewpan rather than a modern baking dish, though this recipe does send the pan to the oven for the reduction. Any heavy saucepan or small Dutch oven that holds the sweetbreads in one layer will do.
- Preparing the sweetbreads"Wash, trim, blanch" covers a lot of work. Soak in several changes of cold water for a few hours until they pale, blanch briefly in simmering salted water, then press between two plates under a weight while they cool before trimming off membrane and gristle. Skipping the pressing gives a loose, spongy texture.
- LardingThreading strips of pork back fat through the meat with a larding needle. Sweetbreads are lean and this kept them moist, but few cooks own the needle now; wrapping in thin barding fat or simply omitting it works, since the braising liquid does most of the job.
- A gillFive fluid ounces in British measure, a little over half a US cup.
- "Boil it up sharply in a hot oven"Reducing the skimmed stock and brown sauce hard and fast. The book gives no temperatures, and "hot oven" in period usage is only loosely equivalent to something in the 400-450F region; the reduction is easier to judge on the stovetop in any case.
- Brown sauceAn espagnole or a demi-glace, both built on browned stock. A reduced veal or beef stock thickened lightly with a brown roux gives the same result.
- SourcingVeal sweetbreads (thymus and pancreas) are a butcher's order in most places. Allow about 1 lb for four as a first course; the heart or kernel sweetbread is the plumper, more sought-after piece.
- Yield and servingThe original gives none. Treat it as a course for four, with rice, buttered noodles or croutons of fried bread to catch the sauce.
Sweetbreads sat near the top of the Victorian meat hierarchy: delicate, pale, expensive, and considered suitable for invalids and for the lightest course of a formal dinner. The name has nothing to do with bread or sugar, and its origin is uncertain; one proposed explanation points to Old English usage in which "bread" or "braed" meant a piece of flesh, with "sweet" distinguishing the mild-tasting glands from the strong offal. The method illustrates a standard French sequence a cook was expected to internalise: blanch and press, lard, braise in stock with a bouquet garni, then finish in a reduction of the braising liquid. The word casserole here still carries its French sense of the vessel rather than the dish, a usage that shifted in English only over the following century.