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Sweetbreads En Casserole
3 sweetbreads 1 bunch herbs 1/2 pint (I cup) stock ¼ lb. fat bacon I carrot I onion A few parsley sprigs I heaping tablespoonful (I oz.) butter I heaping tablespoonful (I oz.) flour Salt and pepper Soak the sweetbreads in cold water for two hours, changing the water several times; drop them into boiling water for three minutes, lift out into cold water for fifteen minutes; drain, and remove the skin and fat, place them for half an hour between two plates, divide the bacon into neat lardoons, and lard them; slice the vegetables and lay them in a casserole, lay the sweetbreads on the top, pour in the stock, and simmer for half an hour.
Melt the butter in another pan, add the flour and the stock from the sweetbreads, and boil for three minutes. Lift the sweetbreads on to a hot dish and strain the sauce over them. 1/2 lbs. round steak I I carrot I small turnip I onion I tomato I bay leaf
A classic English-French treatment of veal sweetbreads: long soaking, a brief blanch, pressing, larding with bacon, then a gentle braise on a bed of vegetables. The whole point is pale, firm, delicately flavoured meat, so nothing here should ever reach a rolling boil.
- The hinge: pressingThe half hour between two plates is not optional garnish work. Pressing a blanched sweetbread (a weighted plate or a small pan on top helps) firms it so it slices cleanly and holds its shape through the braise. Skip it and you get a floppy, crumbling piece of meat.
- Soaking and blanchingTwo hours in several changes of cold water draws out blood and keeps the sweetbreads white. The three-minute drop into boiling water sets the surface only; the cold-water plunge afterwards makes the membrane and fat easy to strip.
- Which sweetbreadsAlmost certainly veal (calf) sweetbreads: the thymus, sold as the "throat" sweetbread, and the pancreas, the round "heart" sweetbread generally reckoned the finer of the two. Order them from a butcher and use them within a day. The recipe gives no yield; three would likely serve three to four as a main course.
- UnitsHalf a pint of stock is given as one US cup in the recipe's own parenthesis. The bacon quantity is garbled in the original ("14 lb.") and is almost certainly a quarter pound. A heaping tablespoonful is given as an ounce, so butter and flour make a small roux of roughly 2 tablespoons each.
- LardingLardoons are matchsticks of fat bacon threaded through the meat with a larding needle. If you have no needle, pierce with a thin skewer and push the strips in, or simply lay bacon over the top and under the sweetbreads. Salt pork or unsmoked streaky bacon gives a less assertive flavour than modern smoked bacon.
- Casserole means the panHere a casserole is a lidded earthenware or heavy stovetop pot, not an oven bake: the recipe says simmer. Cover it and keep the liquid at a bare tremble, roughly 180-190F. Half an hour suits whole sweetbreads at that heat; a hard simmer toughens them.
- The sauceOne cup of braising liquid with 2 tablespoons each butter and flour gives a thick coating sauce. Cook the roux a minute before adding the liquid, whisk to avoid lumps, and boil three minutes to lose the raw flour taste. Season at the end, since reduced stock and bacon both bring salt.
- ServingServe at once on a hot dish; sweetbreads cool and stiffen quickly. Rice, buttered peas or plain toast points are common accompaniments, and the strained vegetables can be discarded, having given up their flavour to the stock.
Sweetbreads were a delicacy in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, expensive enough to appear on hotel menus and in invalid cookery alike, valued for a texture regarded as both rich and easily digested. The method here is often described as the French ris de veau piqué et braisé as it entered English domestic cookbooks: soak, blanch, press, lard, braise on a bed of aromatics. Demand collapsed in Britain and North America over the twentieth century, and by the time BSE-era regulations restricted certain calf offal in the 1990s, sweetbreads had already become a specialist butcher's order rather than a household staple.