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Sweetbreads in Cases
2 pairs sweetbreads 1 can mushrooms 1 cup cream 1/2 cup milk 1 tablespoon butter 1/2 tablespoon Gold Medal flour 1/4 teaspoon salt Few grains cayenne Parboil sweetbreads and remove membranes; separate sweetbreads into small pieces. Trim mushrooms and cut each into four pieces. Melt butter, add flour and seasoning, cook together; add scalded milk and cream slowly, cook together until smooth. To this add the sweetbreads and mushrooms and cook for five minutes. Serve in patty shells or timbales.
A creamed sweetbread filling of the sort that carried a hundred luncheon menus. The technique is straightforward; the sourcing and the preliminary handling are where it asks something of a modern cook.
- What a pair isSweetbreads come from the calf's thymus (the long "throat" bread) and pancreas (the rounder "heart" bread); a pair is both from one animal, and depending on the animal a pair may run anywhere from about three-quarters of a pound upward. Two pairs is a substantial quantity, likely 1 1/2 to 2 lb or more, which will need ordering from a butcher rather than a supermarket case.
- Soak before parboilingThe step the recipe skips: soak the sweetbreads in several changes of cold water for an hour or two until the water runs clear, then parboil 10-15 minutes in salted water with a splash of lemon or vinegar. Peel the membrane while they are still warm and press between two plates under a weight to firm them, or they break up when handled.
- The canned mushroomsThe recipe does not say what size can; period mushroom cans were small, and drained weights of roughly 4 to 8 oz were both sold. They came already cooked and packed in brine. Substitute about 8 oz fresh mushrooms, quartered and sauteed in butter until their liquid has gone, or the sauce will thin out.
- The sauce is deliberately thinHalf a tablespoon of flour to 1 1/2 cups of dairy makes a very loose cream sauce, barely more than thickened cream. That is correct for the period taste, but if you want it to sit in a pastry shell without soaking through, take the flour to a full tablespoon.
- Do not overcook the finished dishFive minutes is the limit. The sweetbreads are already cooked from the parboil, and further simmering in the sauce turns them from silky to grainy.
- Patty shells and timbalesPatty shells are puff pastry vol-au-vent cases; frozen ones work. "Timbales" in this period could mean either the crisp fried cups made on a timbale iron or a molded preparation; paired here with patty shells, the fried case is the likelier reading. Toast points or a baked pastry shell serve the same purpose.
- SeasoningA quarter teaspoon of salt is low for this volume, and canned mushrooms would have brought their own. With fresh mushrooms, salt to taste at the end.
- YieldEnough to fill six to eight patty shells; four servings as a lunch course.
Creamed sweetbreads in pastry cases were a fixture of American company cooking from the 1880s through the 1920s, appearing on wedding breakfasts, club luncheons and the printed menus of hotel dining rooms. Offal was neither cheap nor apologetic then: sweetbreads were a delicacy, and the pale cream sauce and puff-pastry shell were the standard dress for anything a hostess wanted to present as refined. The recipe's appearance in a flour company's cookbook is a small piece of marketing logic a Gold Medal booklet needed to show its product in the company of expensive food, and half a tablespoon of flour in a dish like this did that work as well as a loaf of bread.