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Sweetbread Mousse
Parboil a sweetbread ten minutes, chop, and rub through sieve; there should be one-half cup. Mix with one-third cup breast meat of a raw chicken, and rub through sieve. Pound in mortar, add gradually white of one egg, and work until smooth, then add three-fourth cup heavy cream. Line buttered timbale moulds with mixture, fill centres, cover with mixture, place in a pan of hot water, cover with buttered paper and bake until firm. Remove to serving dish, and pour around sauce.
Filling. Melt one tablespoon butter, add one tablespoon corn-starch, and pour on gradually one-fourth cup White Stock; then add one-third cup parboiled sweetbread cut in cubes, one tablespoon Sherry wine, and salt and pepper to taste. Sauce. Melt three tablespoons butter, add three tablespoons flour, and pour on one cup rich chicken stock and onehalf cup heavy cream. Season with one tablespoon Sherry wine, one-fourth teaspoon beef extract, and salt and pepper to taste.
Suprême of Chicken Breast and second joints of uncooked chicken weighing 4 lbs. 4 eggs 1⅓ cups thick cream Salt and pepper Force chicken through a meat chopper, or chop very finely Beat eggs separately, add one at a time, stirring until mixture is smooth. Add cream, and season with salt and pepper. Turn into slightly buttered Dario moulds, and bake same as Lobster Timbales, allowing thirty minutes for baking. Serve with Suprême or Béchamel Sauce. 1 pint oysters 1/4 cup butter 1/4 cup flour 2/3 cup milk
A forcemeat custard of the old French school: sweetbread and raw chicken pounded to a paste, bound with egg white, lightened with cream, then baked gently in a water bath. Everything depends on keeping the mixture cold.
- The hinge: cold at every stageThe egg white and cream will only hold if the pounded meat stays near refrigerator temperature. Chill the bowl and the sieved paste, add the cream in two or three additions, and stop the moment it is smooth. Warm forcemeat curdles in the mould and weeps butterfat.
- Sweetbreads before you startCalf sweetbreads (thymus or pancreas, depending on the cut) are usually a butcher order. Soak them in several changes of cold water for an hour or two, then parboil the ten minutes given here -- many cooks add a little lemon juice or vinegar to the water -- cool, and peel off the outer membrane and any tubes before chopping.
- Mortar, sieve, processorA food processor does the pounding in seconds, but pulse in short bursts and keep the bowl cold. Passing the paste through a fine sieve afterwards is still worth the trouble; it is what separates a mousse from a meatloaf.
- Timbale mouldsSmall straight-sided metal moulds, typically around 3 to 4 oz. Ramekins or ovenproof teacups work. Butter them well; a disc of parchment in the base makes unmoulding reliable.
- Oven and buttered paperThe recipe gives no temperature; a moderate oven of about 325 to 350F suits a water-bath custard. The "buttered paper" is a sheet of buttered parchment laid over the moulds to stop a skin forming, and the pan of hot water should come partway up their sides.
- Doneness"Until firm" is roughly 25 to 35 minutes for moulds of this size. Because the chicken goes in raw, take the centre to 165F on an instant-read thermometer; the custard should be set with no liquid at the middle.
- White Stock and beef extractWhite Stock in this book is a light veal or chicken stock. Beef extract means a concentrated meat extract of the Bovril or Liebig type; a quarter teaspoon is for colour and depth, so use it sparingly and salt the sauce afterwards.
- YieldThe quantities make roughly two cups of mixture, enough for about four to six small moulds. Filling and sauce are both quickly made and are best finished while the moulds bake.
Sweetbreads were a luxury item in American cooking schools around 1900, and books of this school are full of them: creamed, larded, in croquettes, in patty shells, and here in the most technically ambitious form, a hot mousse baked in individual moulds. The method is straight out of the French repertoire that American cooking-school teachers were adapting: pounded forcemeat, egg white as binder, cream for lightness, a filling of diced meat hidden in the centre, and a rich white sauce poured around the turned-out shape rather than over it. Dishes like this also explain why the period's kitchens owned a mortar and a drum sieve; the smooth texture that a processor now gives in a minute was bought with real labour. Organ meats have since fallen out of the mainstream American diet, and sweetbreads went from a standard entree to a specialist order.