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Sweetbreads with Celery Salad
Wash the sweetbreads and let them stand for half an hour in cold water. Then boil for twenty minutes in salted water. To 1 cupful of minced sweetbreads allow 1 cupful of celery, which has been cut into small dice, and 1/2 cupful of chopped walnut meats. Put into a chilled dish lined with lettuce leaves, and pour over the mixture mayonnaise dressing to which some whipped cream has been added.
A cold composed salad of the sort that filled luncheon menus around 1900, when sweetbreads were common butcher's stock rather than a special order. The work is all in the preparation of the glands themselves.
- What sweetbreads areThe thymus (throat) and pancreas (heart or stomach) glands of a calf or lamb. The recipe does not say which; veal sweetbreads are the likeliest intention. They now generally need ordering from a butcher, and something under a pound raw should give the cupful of minced meat called for, depending on how much is trimmed away.
- The soak matters more than the recipe impliesHalf an hour in cold water is the minimum. Two to three hours with the water changed several times draws out blood and keeps the finished meat pale; a splash of vinegar or lemon in the last change helps.
- Peel after poaching, not beforeTwenty minutes in salted water at a bare simmer is right for veal sweetbreads. Lift them straight into ice water, then pull away the outer membrane and any gristle while they are still cool and firm. Skip this and the salad will be chewy in patches.
- Press before mincingA step often called for in period cookbooks and left unsaid here: after cooling, lay the sweetbreads between two plates with a weight on top and chill an hour. They cut into clean dice instead of crumbling.
- Cut, don't grind"Minced" in period usage means chopped fine by hand. A food processor turns sweetbreads to paste.
- The dressingFold softly whipped unsweetened cream into the mayonnaise lightly, just before serving; the recipe leaves the proportion open, so add it to taste. It thins and mellows the mayonnaise; do it early and it weeps. Homemade mayonnaise here contains raw egg, so use pasteurised eggs if serving anyone vulnerable.
- Serve cold and serve soonChill the dish and the components separately and assemble at the last minute, or the celery will water down the dressing. Cooked sweetbreads are highly perishable and should not sit out.
- YieldRoughly four small luncheon portions as written.