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Mayonnaise of Sweetbreads
One pair of sweetbreads, one tablespoonful of lemon juice, one head of lettuce, one-half pint mayonnaise dressing, a slice of onion if liked. Clean and cook the sweetbreads in boiling salted water, with one tablespoonful of lemon juice, twenty minutes, and plunge into cold water to harden. Stand away to cool. When cold, cut into dice. Arrange the lettuce leaves around a salad dish; mix the sweetbreads with a part of the mayonnaise, and put in the center of the dish, covering the top with the remainder of the mayonnaise. A thin slice of onion may be placed in the center of the salad bowl before adding the salad if liked.
A straightforward cold offal salad that depends almost entirely on how well the sweetbreads are prepped before they meet the mayonnaise. The recipe assumes a cook who already knows that step.
- The step the recipe leaves out"Clean" is doing a lot of work here. Soak the sweetbreads in several changes of cold water (an hour or more, refrigerated) until the water runs clear, then peel away the outer membrane and any tubes and fat after the blanching, while they are still pliable. Membrane left on turns tough and chewy once chilled.
- Press themAfter the cold-water plunge, set the sweetbreads between two plates with a weight on top and refrigerate. Pressing firms the texture so they dice cleanly instead of crumbling into the dressing.
- A pairA pair of veal sweetbreads usually runs around a pound, give or take, and will serve about four as a salad course. Lamb sweetbreads are much smaller and will need considerably less time than twenty minutes, which is likely to overcook them.
- Half a pint of mayonnaiseOne cup. That is generous for a pound of diced sweetbreads — dress lightly, reserve the rest, and add more at the table if wanted.
- "Mayonnaise of"In books of this period a "mayonnaise of" something means the finished cold dish, not the sauce. The title is telling you the form of the salad, not the dressing recipe.
- Sourcing and handlingSweetbreads are highly perishable and usually a special order from a butcher. Buy them fresh-smelling and pale, keep them very cold, and cook them the day you get them.
- The onionThe recipe puts a single thin slice under the salad rather than mixing onion through it, which suggests no more than a faint scenting. Lift it out before serving, or the bottom layer will taste of raw onion.
- Raw yolksClassic mayonnaise is uncooked egg. Use pasteurised eggs if serving anyone pregnant, elderly, very young or immunocompromised, and keep the assembled salad refrigerated until it goes to the table.
Sweetbreads — the thymus and pancreas of a young calf or lamb, not a bread and not sweet in any sugary sense — were a luxury item on American and British tables through the nineteenth century, prized for a delicate texture that suited invalid cookery as readily as it did formal menus. The dish belongs to the period's enthusiasm for cold composed dishes built on a mound of dressed protein, ringed with lettuce and masked in mayonnaise: chicken, lobster, and sweetbreads were among the commonest, and the method varies little between them. The instruction to plunge the cooked sweetbreads into cold water "to harden" and then "stand away to cool" is phrasing common in late-Victorian American cookery writing. The dish faded with the general retreat of offal from home kitchens in the twentieth century, though sweetbreads never disappeared from French restaurant cooking.