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Epigrams of Sweetbreads
Parboil a sweetbread, drain, place in a small mould, cover, and press with a weight. Cut in one-half inch slices, and spread with the following mixture: Fry one-third teaspoon finely chopped shallot in one and one-half tablespoons butter three minutes, add three tablespoons chopped mushrooms, and cook three minutes; then add two and onehalf tablespoons flour, one-half cup stock, two tablespoons cream, one tablespoon Sherry wine, one egg yolk, and salt and pepper to taste. Cool, dip in crumbs, egg, and crumbs, fry in deep fat, and drain.
A late-Victorian entrée that turns sweetbreads into crisp fried medallions under a thick mushroom paste. The original assumes you know how to handle a sweetbread; that part is where most of the work lies.
- Buying and soakingVeal sweetbreads are the standard here; the throat sweetbread is the thymus, the so-called heart sweetbread the pancreas. A pair weighs roughly 1 lb. Soak them in several changes of cold water for a few hours until the water runs clear, then peel away the surface membrane and any hard connective tissue.
- What "parboil" means hereBring them up in salted water with a splash of lemon juice or vinegar, simmer gently 15-20 minutes until firm all through, then plunge into ice water. Boiling hard makes them grainy.
- PressingSetting them in a small mould under a weight for an hour or more in the refrigerator compacts the lobes so they slice cleanly into half-inch rounds. A plate with a can on top does the same job.
- The mixture is a panada, not a sauceTwo and a half tablespoons of flour to half a cup of stock plus two tablespoons cream gives a very stiff paste, which is the point: it has to stay put on the slice through breading and frying. Cook it a minute or two after the flour goes in, and stir the egg yolk in off the heat so it does not scramble.
- Cool it thoroughlyThe instruction to cool is the hinge. Warm paste slides off the sweetbread in the fat and the crust bursts. Spread it on, then chill the coated slices until firm before breading.
- Breading order"Crumbs, egg, and crumbs" has a practical logic: a first light dusting of dry crumbs gives the egg something to grip on the moist surface. Use fine dry crumbs, not fresh.
- Deep fatThe original gives no temperature; about 375F for 2-3 minutes, until the crust is deep gold, suits it. The sweetbread and the mushroom mixture are already cooked apart from the yolk stirred in at the end, so you are mainly setting the coating and heating through; longer and the paste steams and splits.
- StockVeal or light chicken stock, unsalted or lightly salted, since it ends up concentrated in a small volume of stiff paste. Season at the end.
- YieldOne pair of sweetbreads gives about eight slices, enough for four as a first course. Serve with a green pea purée or a plain brown sauce.
An épigramme in classical French cookery is a plated pairing of two different preparations of the same meat — traditionally a piece of braised, pressed and crumbed lamb breast set beside a grilled cutlet — and the term was often stretched, as here, to mean any small pressed, breaded and fried medallion. Cookbooks of the period liked to repeat an anecdote in which a hostess, having heard epigrams praised at a dinner party, ordered her cook to send some up; the story is folklore rather than documented history. Sweetbreads themselves were a staple of the American entrée course in this period, delicate enough to count as company food, and cookbooks of the era carry long runs of them — larded, creamed, in croustades, and fried like this. The technique of parboiling, pressing under a weight and then re-cooking in a crumb crust is standard for offal that is soft when cooked and needs structure before it can be sliced.