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Lemon-juice (Nutmeg Seasoning Half a pint)
Nutmeg. Seasoning. Half a pint of Cream.
Vegetables. Well wash the sweetbreads and cover them with cold water, add one tablespoonful of salt, and put them on the fire to boil for ten minutes. Wash them again in cold water, and press them under a weight until cold; then take out the gristle, put them in a stewpan, and cover them with stock in which is a little vegetable, carrot, celery, onion, and small bouquet garni. Cover with a buttered paper and simmer gently about three-quarters of an hour; prepare the mushrooms, and with the trimmings of the mushrooms, the butter, flour, and stock, make a sauce, and let it well boil, then add the cream, lemon-juice, and seasoning. Strain the sauce and add mushrooms. Dish the sweetbreads on a croustade of fried bread, and cover with the sauce. An addition of green peas or haricots verts is an improvement, and the sweetbreads may be first larded with bacon or truffles. If larded they must be glazed with a little of the stock they were cooked in, and the sauce poured round, not over them.
Rôgnons à l'Epicurienne.
Ingredients.
A classic Edwardian sweetbread entrée: blanch, press, braise, then nap with a mushroom cream sauce. The ingredient list has been cut off mid-page, so the quantities for butter, flour, stock and mushrooms are missing — work from the method and your own judgement.
- Half a pintThis is an imperial pint, so half a pint of cream is 10 fl oz, about 1¼ US cups. It goes into an already-boiled flour-thickened sauce, so it needs only to be brought back to a simmer, not reduced hard.
- The sauce, unmeasuredThe printed ingredient list is truncated. For a sauce to coat two or three sweetbreads, work from roughly 1 oz butter and 1 oz flour cooked to a blond roux, ½ pint stock, then the cream, with lemon juice added off the heat at the end so it does not curdle or dull the flavour.
- Buying sweetbreadsThe recipe does not say which animal; a dish dressed this elaborately is most likely veal, though lamb sweetbreads were also sold under the same name. The heart (pancreas) sweetbread is the round, plump one and the throat (thymus) the more elongated. Order from a butcher; they are highly perishable and should be cooked within a day. Soak in several changes of cold water first to draw out blood, which the recipe assumes under "well wash".
- Blanch, then pressThis is the hinge of the dish. The ten-minute blanch firms the flesh so the outer membrane and gristle can be pulled away, and pressing under a weight (a plate with a couple of tins on it, refrigerated, an hour or more) gives the flat, dense slices that carve cleanly. Skip the pressing and they braise into something shapeless.
- Buttered paperA cartouche — a disc of parchment, buttered on one side, laid directly on the surface. It keeps the exposed tops moist and pale. Parchment is what is meant here; foil will sit less closely on the surface.
- Braising timeThree-quarters of an hour at a bare simmer, the liquid barely trembling rather than bubbling, suits pressed sweetbreads. Do not let the stock boil, which toughens them and clouds the cooking liquid you may want for glazing.
- Croustade of fried breadA thick slice of crustless bread, hollowed slightly or cut to size and fried in clarified butter until crisp, used as a base to keep the sauce off the plate. Fry it at the last minute; it goes soft quickly under a cream sauce.
- Larded and glazedLarding with bacon or truffle strips means threading them through the meat with a larding needle before braising. The recipe says only that larded sweetbreads must be glazed with a little of the stock they were cooked in, with the sauce poured round rather than over; in practice that means reducing some of the braising liquid down and brushing it over so the larded surface stays visible.
- YieldTwo veal sweetbreads with the sauce and a garnish of peas or haricots verts will serve four as an entrée in the older sense — a course between fish and roast — or two as a modern main.
Sweetbreads were a fixture of high-class cookery at the turn of the twentieth century, and they demanded careful handling: the soaking, blanching, pressing and peeling all had to be done before cooking began. In the French-influenced service this book assumes, an entrée was not the main course but a made dish served after the fish and before the roast, and a pale braised sweetbread under a cream-and-mushroom sauce was exactly the sort of thing expected there — mild, rich, and dressed up with truffles, larding or a green garnish according to the occasion. The stray heading Rôgnons à l'Épicurienne at the end belongs to the next recipe in the book, kidneys in the same offal-forward tradition.