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This recipe calls for animal brains or related nervous-system tissue. Cattle brain and spinal tissue can transmit bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), the cause of variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease in humans, which is fatal and has no treatment.
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Sweetbreads
Three good throat sweetbreads will make a dish. Blanch them well and lay in cold water, then take out and dry well. Add egg, bread crumbs, and herbs. Put on a dish and brown in an oven. Eat with mushroom or tomato sauce.--Mrs. R.
Sweetbreads.
Soak, and put in boiling water for ten minutes. Stew in cold water to blanch them.
They may be cut in slices or in dice and put in fricassee or meats, or ragouts, or used as a separate dish.--Mrs. W.
Sweetbreads.
Lay them in salt and water, after washing; parboil until done; drain, dry, and split in half. Rub with butter, pepper and salt. Dip in one egg beaten stiff. Sift over pounded cracker.
Butter a baking-dish, lay them in, and set in a hot oven to brown, or fry until a light brown.--Mrs. S. T.
Three variations on the same procedure, all from the era when sweetbreads were a standard restaurant and dinner-party luxury. The bones of the method still hold; only the vagueness needs filling in.
- Throat vs. heart sweetbreadsThe "throat sweetbread" is the thymus gland, long and irregular. Usage for the other kind is not settled: the "heart" or "stomach" sweetbread is variously given as the rounder lobe of the thymus lying near the heart or as the pancreas, and whichever is meant it is generally reckoned the better eating. Veal is the standard; lamb sweetbreads are smaller and cook faster. Order ahead from a butcher, as few supermarkets stock them.
- Soak first, and mean itTwo of the three cooks begin with soaking or salt water (Mrs. R. blanches first and then lays hers in cold water), and the soak is the hinge of the dish. Two to three hours in several changes of cold water, refrigerated, draws out blood and keeps the flesh pale; skipping it tends to give a greyer, stronger-tasting result.
- What blanching actually means hereMrs. W.'s "stew in cold water to blanch them" is obscure; the likeliest reading is that after the brief boil the glands go into cold water to firm them so the membrane can be peeled. Ten to fifteen minutes in barely simmering salted water is enough for veal sweetbreads; hard boiling makes them tough and rubbery.
- Peel and pressNone of the three cooks mentions it, but once cooled you should strip off the outer membrane and any fat or tubes. Pressing the trimmed sweetbreads between two plates with a weight for an hour, in the refrigerator, gives the even slabs that slice and crumb cleanly.
- "A hot oven"Read that as roughly 425F. In Mrs. S. T.'s version the glands are already cooked through, since she parboils "until done," so the oven is only setting and browning the crumb, which takes 10 to 15 minutes. Mrs. R. blanches hers only, so her "brown in an oven" has more cooking to do.
- Pounded crackerNineteenth-century crumbing often used dried soda or water crackers crushed fine rather than bread. Panko or plain dry breadcrumbs do the same job; season them, since Mrs. S. T.'s version relies on the butter, pepper and salt rubbed on underneath.
- HerbsMrs. R. leaves "herbs" open. Parsley, thyme and a little lemon zest worked into the crumbs suit the mild, faintly sweet flavour; anything assertive buries it.
- YieldThree veal throat sweetbreads, trimmed, will serve about four as a main course or six as a first course; the actual weight varies a good deal with the animal.
Housekeeping in Old Virginia, compiled by Marion Cabell Tyree and published in 1879, gathers contributions from named Virginia housewives, which is why the same dish appears three times over with three sets of initials attached. Sweetbreads occupied an odd place in that period's cooking: an offal cut, but a delicacy on hotel and club menus in Richmond, New York and London, where they were served in cream, in patties, or breaded and browned as here. The word itself is old and its origin uncertain; it is generally traced to an older sense of bread (Old English braed) meaning flesh or a piece of roast meat, with "sweet" distinguishing the mild taste from stronger organ meats. American appetite for them faded through the twentieth century as household cooks stopped buying variety meats, though they have never left the French repertoire, where ris de veau remains a restaurant standard.