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Baked Sweetbreads
Soak sweetbreads in cold water; lard; place on slices of salt pork in dripping pan; cover with milk or stock; cook until tender and serve with Tomato Sauce.
A terse turn-of-the-century entrée that assumes the cook already knows how sweetbreads are handled. The recipe's real work happens before it starts: soaking, blanching and pressing.
- Soak, then blanch and pressCold water for an hour or two draws out blood; the older books change the water two or three times. Then blanch briefly in acidulated water, drop into ice water, peel away the tough outer membrane and any ducts, and press between two plates under a weight until cold. Skipping the pressing gives a loose, spongy result that will not slice.
- Which sweetbreadVeal sweetbreads are the thymus (the long "throat" bread) and the pancreas (the rounder, better "heart" bread). Butchers rarely stock them; order ahead. Allow one pair, roughly 8-12 oz, for two people as an entrée.
- "Lard"Threading strips of chilled pork fat through the meat with a larding needle. Modern lean pork fatback works; if you have no needle, draping thin sheets of fatback or unsmoked bacon over the top does the same job of basting a very lean meat.
- Dripping panA shallow roasting pan, not a deep casserole. The recipe says to cover the sweetbreads with milk or stock, which reads as immersing them; if you want the tops to colour you can bring the liquid only partway up, but that is a departure from the text.
- Oven temperatureNone is given, as with most recipes of this vintage. A moderate oven, 350F, suits this braise; the pork underneath will render without scorching.
- TimingPressed, blanched sweetbreads need only about 25-35 minutes at 350F, basted once or twice. They are done when firm and lightly gilded. Long cooking dries them into something chalky.
- The salt porkSalt pork of this period was generally saltier than what is sold now, and cooks sometimes freshened it in water first. Taste before adding any salt to the pan liquid, and hold back on salting the tomato sauce until the two are together.
- ServingLift the sweetbreads out, slice on the diagonal if large, and nap with the tomato sauce rather than drowning them. The pan liquid is worth straining and reducing into the sauce.
Lowney's Cook Book was written by Maria Willett Howard for the Walter M. Lowney Company, a Boston chocolate manufacturer, and published in 1907 -- one of many corporate cookbooks of the period that surrounded their advertised product with a full course of respectable general cookery. Sweetbreads sat near the top of the American entrée repertoire then: expensive, delicate, French in association, and a standard test of a good cook or a good hotel kitchen. The technique here, larding a lean gland and braising it over salt pork, is straight out of the classical French method taught in the cooking schools that shaped books like this one. They have since largely vanished from home kitchens, surviving mainly on restaurant menus; the reasons are debated, and changes in retail butchery, regulation and cost have all been suggested.