Home › Salads › Sweetbread and Cucumber Salad
Sweetbread and Cucumber Salad
1 pair sweetbreads, cooked and cooled. 2 medium sized cucumbers. Peel cucumbers and stand in ice water for an hour, cut in dice almost half inch, break sweetbreads into small bits with silver knife, mix lightly, serve in cucumber boats on lettuce, with following dressing: 1 pt. double cream. 4 tablespoons lemon juice. 1/4 teaspoon salt. Dash cayenne.
Whip cream solid, mix gradually the lemon and seasoning; fold into salad.
A composed salad from the era when sweetbreads were standard restaurant fare. Two things need attention: the sweetbreads themselves, which the recipe assumes you already know how to cook, and the dressing, which is a pint of whipped cream and will overwhelm the dish unless you scale it down.
- "1 pair sweetbreads, cooked and cooled"A pair is the sweetbreads from one calf, roughly 1 to 1 1/2 lb. Standard preparation: soak in several changes of cold water for a few hours to draw out blood, simmer gently in salted acidulated water for 15-20 minutes, then plunge into ice water, peel away the outer membrane and gristle, and press between two plates under a weight until cold and firm. Firming is what lets them break into neat bits rather than mush.
- SourcingVeal sweetbreads are usually the thymus, though the pancreas is sold under the same name, and they are rarely on display; order from a butcher a few days ahead. They are highly perishable — use within a day of purchase and cook them the same day you plan to serve.
- The silver knifeNot superstition. Old carbon-steel blades reacted with acidic and delicate foods and left a grey cast and metallic taste. Modern stainless steel does the same job; the instruction to "break" rather than slice still matters, since torn pieces hold dressing better.
- Cut down the creamA pint of heavy cream whipped will bury a pound of sweetbread. Half a cup of cream, with the lemon and seasoning scaled to about 1 tablespoon juice and a pinch of salt, dresses this quantity adequately. "Double cream" here means heavy or whipping cream, not the British 48% product.
- Adding the lemonWhip the cream to firm peaks first, then trickle the juice in while folding. Poured in fast, the acid slackens and grains the cream. Dress at the last moment — the salad weeps as it stands.
- Cucumber boatsHalve the cucumbers lengthwise and scoop out the seed channel to make a trough; the diced flesh from the scooping goes into the salad. The hour in ice water is for crispness and is worth keeping.
- YieldFour generous servings as a first course, six as part of a luncheon. Serve cold on chilled plates.
Sweetbreads occupied an odd position in American cooking around 1900: offal by origin, but delicate enough in flavor and pale enough in color to read as luxury — and expensive enough at the butcher to reinforce that impression — which is why they turn up in salads, patty shells and creamed dishes on hotel menus of the period rather than in plain family cookery. The book comes out of the aftermath of wartime food conservation campaigns, when organ meats had been actively promoted as a way to spare beef and pork — though a pint of whipped cream in the dressing suggests the thrift did not extend to dairy. The pairing with cucumber and a sharpened cream dressing follows the standard logic of the era's "salads," where something rich and bland was cut with acid and something cold and crisp.