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Sweetbreads, Roast
Soak the sweetbreads for a couple of hours, plunge them into boiling water, boil them quickly for five or ten minutes, and throw them into cold water. Simmer them gently for twenty minutes, dry them, dip them in clarified butter, and cover them with highly-seasoned bread-crumbs. Put a small skewer through them, and tie them on a spit. Roast them gently before a clear fire, and baste industriously during the process. Serve on a hot dish, which should be garnished with parsley and cut lemon. Brown sauce or mushroom sauce may be sent to table with the sweetbreads. If liked, the sweetbreads can be roasted in a Dutch oven before the fire, instead of being tied to a spit. They will need to be basted liberally, and to be turned about that they may be equally browned. Time, about twenty minutes to simmer the sweetbreads; half an hour to roast them.
A Victorian roast of veal sweetbreads, written for an open fire. The method itself — soak, blanch, simmer, crumb, roast — is still the standard treatment, and the only thing that really needs translating is the equipment.
- The hinge: blanch, then chillThe plunge into boiling water followed immediately by cold water is what firms the sweetbread and lets you peel off the outer membrane and any gristle. Skip it and the finished breads are flabby and impossible to trim cleanly.
- Press them before crumbingMany modern recipes add a step the original leaves out: after the gentle simmer, lay the sweetbreads between two plates with a weight on top and chill for an hour. They hold their shape on the skewer and slice far better.
- "Dutch oven" here is not a potA Dutch oven of this period is a tin reflector screen set open-side toward the fire. The book gives no temperatures; for a modern equivalent try a hot oven, around 425F, or a rotisserie if you have one. The recipe allows half an hour; 20-25 minutes may be enough, turning and basting.
- Clarified butterButter with the milk solids and water removed, so it will not scorch or make the crumbs soggy. Melt unsalted butter gently, skim the foam, pour off the clear fat and leave the milky residue behind.
- "Highly-seasoned bread-crumbs"The book does not specify. Period seasoning for crumbs would run to salt, pepper, mace or nutmeg, and chopped parsley or lemon zest. Dried crumbs crisp better than fresh, which absorb the butter and steam.
- Soaking is for whitenessThe two-hour soak in several changes of cold water draws out blood. Longer is better; overnight in the refrigerator is common practice now, and the water should run clear before you blanch.
- SourcingThe "throat sweetbread" is the thymus; the "heart sweetbread" is the pancreas. Either is a butcher's order in most places. Buy them very fresh or frozen, and use them within a day of thawing — they spoil faster than muscle meat.
- YieldReckon one pair of veal sweetbreads, roughly 12-14 oz, for two people as a main course, or four as a first course.
Sweetbreads were among the most prized parts of a calf in the nineteenth century, and Cassell's gives them a run of recipes — fried, braised, stewed, in patties — of which this spit-roasted version is the most old-fashioned in method. The name has nothing to do with bread or with sugar: the second element is generally traced to Old English brǣd, meaning flesh, and the "sweet" is thought to distinguish the mild-tasting glands from strongly flavoured offal such as liver or kidney. Cooks of the period distinguished the round "heart sweetbread" (the pancreas) from the longer "throat sweetbread" (the thymus), and considered the former the finer. The recipe offers a reflector oven as an alternative to the spit — a screen set before the open fire rather than an enclosed oven.