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Sweetbread of Hog
This nice morsel is between the maw and ruffle piece inside of the hog. Put them in soak for a day; parboil them and then gash them and stew then in pepper, butter, one teacup of milk and a little vinegar. Or they are very nice fried or broiled.--Mrs. P. W.
A whole-hog butchery note as much as a recipe: the quantities are left to the cook, and the anatomy will need translating before you can order the ingredient.
- What the cut actually is"Maw" is the stomach and the "ruffle" is the frilled mesentery that holds the intestines; what lies between them is the pancreas, sold as stomach or belly sweetbread. Ask a butcher who breaks whole pigs for pork sweetbreads; supermarkets almost never carry them, and what is sold plainly as "sweetbreads" is usually veal thymus, which works the same way here.
- Soak cold, not on the counterThe day-long soak draws out blood and firms the flesh. Do it in the refrigerator in salted or lightly acidulated water, changing the water two or three times; offal at room temperature for a day is not something to repeat.
- Parboil, then peelTen to fifteen minutes at a bare simmer sets the sweetbread so the outer membrane can be pulled or scraped away. Skipping this leaves a tough skin that shrinks and curls in the pan. Cooling them under a weighted plate for an hour makes slicing much easier.
- "Gash them"Score the surface in shallow parallel cuts. On a thick sweetbread this lets the peppered butter and vinegar reach the interior and helps it cook evenly.
- One teacup of milkPeriod teacup measures are not fixed; conversions generally fall between about four and six fluid ounces (half to three-quarters of a cup). Add more only if the pan threatens to go dry.
- The vinegar"A little" means a teaspoon or two, added to cut the richness. Milk and vinegar together may separate in any case, so keep the heat gentle.
- DonenessStew gently until a knife meets no resistance, about fifteen to twenty minutes after the parboil. Offal should reach 160F throughout; sweetbreads are best just past that point, since long cooking turns them mealy rather than creamy.
- Fried or broiledBoth variants assume the soak and parboil have already happened. Slice the pressed sweetbreads half an inch thick, season, and cook hot and fast, three to four minutes a side in butter or under a broiler.
- YieldA pig yields only a few ounces of pancreas, so this was a dish for one or two people at hog-killing time. Reckon four to six ounces of trimmed sweetbread per serving.
Sweetbreads are the thymus (throat or neck sweetbread) and pancreas (stomach or belly sweetbread) of a young animal. The word has nothing to do with sugar or baking; it is generally traced to an older sense of "bread" meaning a piece of flesh, with "sweet" distinguishing it from the strong-flavored organs. What makes this entry characteristic of Housekeeping in Old Virginia is that it treats the hog's pancreas as worth the trouble at all. The book was assembled from contributed household receipts in a state where a farm family butchered its own hogs in cold weather and used every part within days; the pancreas spoils quickly and could not be salted or smoked like hams and middlings, so it was eaten at once. The instruction to soak, parboil and score is the standard handling of the period.