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Sweetbread Croquettes
Take two pairs of sweetbreads; one-half pint of cream; one-third teaspoon of pepper; one-half teaspoon of parsley; four tablespoons of mushrooms; two tablespoons of butter; one tablespoon of flour; one tablespoon of lemon juice; one tablespoon of salt; two eggs. Parboil and cool the sweetbreads and chop them rather fine; then add the chopped mushrooms, and also the seasoning. Put the cream on the fire, and heat slowly. Rub the flour and butter well together, and stir them into the cream when it boils, stirring until smooth. Now add the sweetbread mixture, stir well and simmer for three minutes. Next put into the boiling mass the well-beaten eggs, stir quickly, and remove from the fire at once Pour this mixture on a platter and set it away to cool, allowing at least two hours for the purpose. Shape into cylinders with the hands, roll them in beaten egg and then in bread or cracker crumbs, and fry in plenty of hot lard, using the frying basket. Serve with béchamel sauce.
A standard croquette method: a very thick, egg-bound cream sauce carrying chopped sweetbreads, chilled solid overnight, breaded and deep-fried. Most of the work is in the sweetbreads themselves, which the recipe assumes you already know how to handle.
- Buy and prep the sweetbreadsTwo pairs of veal sweetbreads is roughly 1½–2 lb; order them ahead from a butcher. Soak in several changes of cold water for a few hours to purge blood, then parboil 15–20 minutes in acidulated water, cool under weight, and peel away the membrane and gristle before chopping.
- The salt is almost certainly a misprintThe salt looks high -- a tablespoon against roughly two pounds of sweetbreads and a cup of cream works out near one and a half per cent by weight, salty even for a fried croquette, and it may well be a misprint for a teaspoon. Season lightly at the outset, taste the cooled mixture, and correct at the end.
- Half a pint of creamOne cup. With a tablespoon each of butter and flour it makes a loose sauce, and the eggs plus the chopped meat are what set it. Do not thin it further.
- Temper the eggs"Put into the boiling mass the well-beaten eggs" will curdle if you tip them straight in. Whisk a ladle of the hot mixture into the beaten eggs first, return it to the pan off direct heat, and stir until it thickens without boiling.
- Chill longer than two hoursTwo hours is the minimum for a shallow platter; overnight in the refrigerator is better. The mixture must be firm enough to shape without flour, or the croquettes burst in the fat.
- Frying temperatureThe original says only "plenty of hot lard." Use 375°F, in enough fat to float the croquettes, and fry in small batches so the temperature holds. Two to three minutes is enough — everything inside is already cooked, you are only setting the crust.
- Double-breading helpsEgg and crumbs once will do, but egg, crumb, egg, crumb again gives a seal that survives the fryer. Let the breaded cylinders rest cold for 30 minutes before frying.
- YieldAbout 12 to 16 croquettes of finger length, serving six as a first course with the béchamel sauce spooned around rather than over, so the crust stays crisp.
Sweetbreads — the thymus and pancreas of a calf or lamb — were a luxury item in American and English cooking of the late nineteenth century, priced alongside good cuts of beef and treated as suitable for company. The croquette was one of the most fashionable forms in which they appeared: French in pedigree, technically fussy, and small enough that an expensive ingredient could be stretched across a table. The Butterick Publishing Company, better known for dress patterns and The Delineator, issued its cook book to the same aspirational middle-class household it sold sleeve patterns to, and recipes like this one show the ambition of that audience. The name "sweetbread" has no settled origin; it is generally traced to an older sense of "bread" meaning a morsel or piece of flesh, with "sweet" distinguishing it from stronger-tasting offal.