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Thirteenth Day: Aunt
The next morning Rose came in saying that her mamma would like to have her wait on the table with the other girls, if agreeable to Aunt Nelly, and offering her services as cook. At the same time Mabel was invited to spend the morning with Jessie, with the promise that she should come home when the little waiters ate their lunch.
She would rather have stayed and helped at home, but having a strong suspicion that she would be somewhat in the way, she went off very pleasantly, and the cooking party set to work in good earnest. "Now for our new recipe," said Aunt Jane.
No. 169-STEWED SWEETBREADS.
Lay the sweetbreads in milkwarm water for an hour, having first carefully trimmed off all bits of skin and fat. Then throw into boiling water and boil hard ten minutes, after which cool them off in ice-water until they become white and firm. Then stew until tender in a very little water, add for each one a heaping teaspoonful of butter, a little chopped parsley with pepper and salt, and a little cream, together with the yolk of a hard boiled egg rubbed to a powder. Let them simmer in this gravy for five minutes; then send to table in a covered dish. "The sweetbreads will require three-quarters of an hour to stew," said Aunt Jane, " so we will begin on them about eleven o'clock, as our lunch is to be at one. They are something you can't hurry. Next come our two ways of cooking potatoes."
A clear four-stage treatment of sweetbreads — soak, blanch, firm in ice water, stew — that still reflects good practice, though the timings belong to a larger, tougher piece of offal than most butchers sell now.
- What sweetbreads areThe thymus and pancreas glands of a calf or lamb, sold in pairs; the rounder "heart" sweetbread is the prized one. Order them ahead from a butcher, use them within a day, and keep them cold — a pair of veal sweetbreads is roughly 3/4 to 1 lb and serves two.
- "Milkwarm" waterMilkwarm means blood-warm, about 95-100F. An hour of warm soaking on the counter is not how offal is handled today: soak in several changes of cold water in the refrigerator, two hours or overnight, until the water runs clear.
- Trim after blanching, not beforeThe recipe has you strip skin and fat first. The outer membrane peels away far more easily once the sweetbreads have been blanched and chilled, and you lose less meat doing it that way.
- Ten minutes of hard boiling is too longTen minutes of hard boiling is longer than modern practice -- bring them up gently and hold at a bare simmer, a few minutes for small lamb sweetbreads and longer for large veal ones, just until the flesh firms and turns opaque, then straight into ice water. Boiled hard, they tighten and go grainy.
- Press themAn unstated step that many modern recipes call for: after the ice bath, set the sweetbreads between two plates with a weight on top for an hour in the refrigerator. They hold together in the stew instead of falling into shreds.
- Three-quarters of an hour to stewBlanched, pressed sweetbreads need 15-20 minutes of gentle braising in very little liquid, not 45. Aunt Jane's instinct is the right one -- never hurry them, never let the pan boil -- applied to a longer cooking than yours will need.
- The butter and the egg yolkA heaping teaspoonful per sweetbread is nearer two level teaspoons than one. The sieved hard-boiled yolk is the thickener for the sauce: rub it through a fine strainer and stir it in off a hard boil, or it will curdle rather than bind.
- ServingA covered dish matters here — sweetbreads cool fast and stiffen. Serve at once over toast or with the pan sauce spooned over, allowing half a pair per person as a course.
Sweetbreads were everyday genteel food in the 1870s rather than the restaurant luxury they became: mild, soft and easily digested. The name is old and its origin is not settled o to to Old English bræd, meaning flesh, with "sweet" distinguishing the gland from stronger-tasting offal. This passage comes from Six Little Cooks, a story-and-recipe book in which Aunt Jane teaches a group of children by numbered receipt (No. 169). The insistence that sweetbreads "can't be hurried" and the careful hour-by-hour planning backward from a one o'clock lunch is the real lesson of the day hrough a dish that punishes impatience.