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Sweetbreads with Spaghetti or Macaroni and Tomatoes
Blanch the sweetbreads, lard them, and bake until nicely browned, basting with a little rich brown stock. Mix boiled spaghetti with a rich cream sauce, or use spaghetti or macaroni that has been baked with cheese the day previous. Heat it very hot and make it into a flattened mound in the centre of a hot platter, and arrange the hot sweetbreads on the top, pouring over any sauce that may be in the pan. Surround the whole with stuffed and baked tomatoes. This is excellent as a piece de resistance for an informal lunch or Sunday evening supper, as it can nearly all be made ready beforehand. The tomatoes could be all prepared for the filling in the morning and placed in the refrigerator, and the crumbs seasoned and mixed ready in another bowl. The sweetbreads should be blanched and larded, and these also put in the refrigerator. The spaghetti could be either boiled in the morning or baked the day before--a larger amount than needed for dinner being cooked and the remainder saved for the sweetbreads.
Half an hour before the time for the meal have the oven hot; if there is a gas range, so much the better. Fill the tomatoes and put them in to bake; put the prepared sweetbreads also in the oven, which should be quite hot. While these are baking, set the pan containing the spaghetti and sauce into the oven, giving it just time to get thoroughly heated, or heat the macaroni or spaghetti in a saucepan or steamer on the top of the range. It then only remains to dish them when the tomatoes are done. With a tastily made salad, nut sandwiches or thin slices of bread and butter, which could also be prepared beforehand and put in the refrigerator, some fruit and cake or a made dessert of jellied or frozen fruit and tea or coffee, the gods and all their friends should be tempted to eat.
An assembly dish rather than a formula: no quantities are given, and the cook is expected to know how to blanch and lard sweetbreads and how to stuff a tomato. The notes below fill in the numbers the original assumes.
- Sweetbreads, and buying themThese are veal thymus (the "throat") and pancreas (the "heart" or belly sweetbread); the heart sweetbreads are rounder and generally reckoned the better of the two for this treatment. They are highly perishable and usually need ordering from a butcher. Allow roughly 1 1/2 lb for four people, since trimming loses a good deal.
- Blanching means more than a quick dipSoak in several changes of cold water for two to three hours until they lose their pinkness, then bring slowly to a simmer in salted water for 3-5 minutes, drop into ice water, and peel away the outer membrane and any fat or tubes. Press between two plates with a weight for an hour or so; this firms them enough to slice and lard.
- LardingThreading strips of chilled pork fatback through the surface with a larding needle. Without the needle, drape thin sheets of fatback or unsmoked bacon over the top and secure with kitchen string; sweetbreads have almost no internal fat and dry out quickly without a covering.
- Oven temperatureThe recipe twice calls for a hot oven; in practice something in the region of 425F will suit both the tomatoes and the larded surface. Baste every ten minutes with the brown stock. The timetable allows half an hour, which is about right for whole heart sweetbreads and more than enough for smaller pieces.
- The stuffed tomatoesNo filling is specified. The seasoned crumbs mentioned in the make-ahead notes are presumably the stuffing: hollowed tomatoes filled with buttered breadcrumbs, to which the chopped pulp and seasoning may be added. Bake 20-25 minutes at the same heat, until the shells slump slightly but still hold.
- Spaghetti and cream sauceCook the pasta short of soft, since it is reheated in the sauce and will absorb liquid. A rich cream sauce here means a béchamel loosened with cream; keep it thinner than seems right, as it tightens in the oven.
- Make-ahead and the refrigeratorThe staging works, but blanched sweetbreads should be refrigerated no more than a day and kept covered and cold until they go into the oven. Cooked pasta held overnight is fine; reheat it thoroughly rather than merely warm.
- ServingScaled as suggested above this makes a main course for four, with the tomatoes serving as the vegetable. A sharp green salad, as the recipe suggests, is the right counterweight to cream sauce and larded offal.