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Fried Sweetbreads
2 pairs sweetbreads 2 tablespoons flour 1 cup milk Salt and pepper Egg Bread or cracker-crums Prepare as directed and cut in even-sized slices. Sprinkle with salt and pepper, dip in beaten egg and crums and fry in deep fat. When well browned on both sides, place them on a platter. Make a sauce with two tablespoons of the fat in which the sweetbreads were fried, the flour and milk and season with salt and pepper. Fried sweetbreads are often served with green peas, placed in a mound or a little hill in the center of the platter. Macaroni may be boiled very tender and laid on the platter and the sweetbreads placed in the center, the pipes of the macaroni being laid about them in the form of a nest.
A straightforward breaded-and-fried veal sweetbread with a pan gravy. The recipe leans on "prepare as directed" from an earlier page in the book, and that preparation is the whole job.
- What "prepare as directed" meansThe instruction points back to an earlier page not reproduced here. Standard practice of the period was to soak sweetbreads in several changes of cold water until no pink remains, blanch them briefly in salted acidulated water, cool them, and peel away membrane and gristle. Without this they stay soft and bloody and will not slice cleanly.
- Press them before slicingPeriod cookbooks commonly chill blanched sweetbreads flat between two plates under a weight for an hour. Pressed sweetbreads cut into even slabs that take the breading more neatly; unpressed ones are harder to slice cleanly.
- Which sweetbread you are buyingThe recipe does not specify, but veal sweetbreads are the likely intent. A "pair" traditionally means the elongated throat sweetbread (thymus) together with the round "heart" sweetbread, which is in fact the pancreas. Two pairs is roughly 1 1/2 lb, though sizes vary. They usually have to be ordered from a butcher.
- Deep fatThe recipe gives no temperature, only "fry in deep fat" until well browned; modern deep-frying practice would put this around 375F. Cooler and the crumb coating soaks; hotter and the outside colors first. A few minutes a side suffices, since blanching has already partly cooked the meat.
- The sauceTwo tablespoons fat, two tablespoons flour and one cup milk is a standard medium white sauce. Cook the flour in the fat a full minute before adding milk, or the gravy tastes raw. Fried in a neutral oil rather than lard or drippings the sauce will be blander; a little butter helps.
- Crumbs"Bread or cracker-crums" means dry fine crumbs, not fresh soft bread and not panko. Cracker crumbs give a denser, saltier crust; adjust the added salt accordingly.
- YieldTwo pairs will serve about four as a main course, six as a first course. The recipe offers the peas or the macaroni "nest" as garnish, filling out the platter around the sliced sweetbreads.
Sweetbreads were a prestige item in American cooking from roughly the 1880s through the 1920s, appearing regularly on hotel menus and in the domestic press. They were considered delicate enough for invalids and elegant enough for company, which is why so many period recipes surround them with pale garnishes: green peas, macaroni, cream sauce, all arranged for the platter. The elaborate "nest" of macaroni pipes is characteristic of the era's plating, when a dish was expected to arrive at the table already composed rather than served onto individual plates in the kitchen. Offal fell out of American favor after the Second World War, and sweetbreads went from a common butcher's item to a special order, which is the main reason this once-ordinary recipe now reads as ambitious.