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SWEETBREADS, LARDED (a la Financiere)
Soak four sweetbreads, boil them quickly till they are firm but not at all hard, cool them, then lard them evenly and thickly with thin strips of fat bacon. Butter a baking-dish, and spread a layer of sliced carrots, onions, and celery at the bottom. Lay the sweetbreads upon the vegetables, and pour round them as much stock as will barely come up to the larding. Put them in a sharp oven, and bake until done enough, basting them frequently with the liquor. When they are done enough, and the surface is brightly browned, dish them as follows. Put a croustade in a dish, and fill it with TOULOUSE RAGOUT (which see). Place the sweetbreads against the sides of the croustade, and garnish the dish as prettily as possible. The croustade may be made as follows. Take an oval loaf one day old. Cut off the round top, and scoop out the crumb of the loaf, leaving three-quarters of an inch of bread all round, and at the bottom. Pare away the crust and dip the case into oiled butter. Put it in the oven till it begins to harden, then again dip it in butter, and place it again in the oven till it acquires a little colour, when it will be ready for use. Time to bake the sweetbreads, about half an hour.
A grand-service dish from the era when a garnish had a name and a recipe of its own. Most of the work is in the preparation of the sweetbreads; the rest is assembly.
- Buy the right glandVeal sweetbreads come as the round, plump heart (or stomach) sweetbread and the longer, thinner throat (or neck) piece. The heart sweetbreads are what this recipe wants; four will come to something like 2 to 3 lb, serving four to six as a main course. Order ahead from a butcher.
- Soaking and firmingSoak in several changes of cold water, refrigerated, for a few hours until the water runs clear and the glands are pale. The "boil quickly till firm" step is a blanch of a few minutes -- say 5 to 10, depending on size -- and no longer, or they toughen. Cool them under cold water, then peel off the outer membrane and any fat while they are still pliable.
- The step the recipe leaves outBetween blanching and larding, press the sweetbreads flat under a weighted plate in the refrigerator for an hour or more. The recipe does not call for it, though pressing is standard in classical practice. Unpressed sweetbreads cook unevenly and will not hold a neat larding.
- Larding without a needleLarding means threading strips of fat bacon or back fat through the surface with a larding needle. If you have neither needle nor pork fat, drape thin slices of unsmoked fatty bacon over the top and tie them on; the basting effect is the same, though the finished look is not.
- "A sharp oven"A hot one, roughly 400 to 450F. The half hour given is realistic for pressed sweetbreads in that heat, with the stock barely reaching the larding so the tops roast while the bottoms braise. Baste often, every 8 to 10 minutes, or the fat strips will scorch before the interior is hot.
- Toulouse ragoutThe classic Toulouse garnish is a ragout of veal quenelles, mushrooms and truffle bound in a pale velouté, and in its fuller form it also carried cockscombs and cocks' kidneys, which no modern kitchen will source; what the cross-referenced recipe itself contains is not reproduced here. A quenelle-and-mushroom velouté, with truffle if you have it, reads correctly on the plate.
- The croustadeA day-old oval loaf, as the recipe specifies, is best; fresh bread tears when scooped and steams instead of crisping. "Oiled butter" means butter melted until it runs clear, the fat used and the milky sediment left behind. Two dips with a firming bake between them give a case that will hold a wet ragout for the length of a dinner.
- ServingEverything must go out hot and be eaten promptly. The bread case begins to soften from the inside once it is filled.
À la financière was one of the set garnishes of nineteenth-century restaurant and grande cuisine, its name often said to derive from the financiers whose tables it was thought to suit: a rich brown-and-Madeira dressing of quenelles, mushrooms, truffles, olives and cockscombs, expensive in every direction. The Toulouse garnish called for here is its paler sibling, built on a white velouté rather than a brown sauce, and sweetbreads take kindly to both. Sweetbreads themselves were prized, and expensive, precisely because handling them well is a test of technique — the soaking, the blanch, the pressing, the larding, all before the dish proper begins. This is a dish for someone cooking for a formal table, with a stockpot already going and a larding needle in the drawer. The hollowed-loaf croustade is the thrifty note in an otherwise lavish assembly, a serving vessel made from yesterday's bread.