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This recipe calls for animal brains or related nervous-system tissue. Cattle brain and spinal tissue can transmit bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), the cause of variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease in humans, which is fatal and has no treatment.
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Sweetbreads in Pepper Cases
Parboil the sweetbreads, chill and cut in dice, using sufficient to fill a cup. Prepare a sauce by blending two tablespoons with the same quantity of flour and gradually pouring on a half cup of chicken stock and two tablespoons of thick cream. When thoroughly mixed, stir in the diced sweetbreads and a half cup of button mushrooms cut into small pieces. Season with salt, worcestershire sauce and paprika or a little cayenne. Parboil six peppers from which the inner fibre and white seeds have been removed. Cut a slice from the stem end when partially cool and fill with the prepared sweetbread and mushroom mixture, cover with buttered crumbs and bake until a delicate brown. A mushroom sauce may be served around each pepper. See chapter on Sauces for Fish, Meat, Poultry and Game. BRAISED SWEETBREADS À LA PARLOA-Three pairs of sweetbreads; two tablespoons of butter; one level tablespoon of flour; one-half pint of water; one teaspoon of minced carrot; two teaspoons of minced onion; one teaspoon of salt; one-fourth teaspoon of pepper; one-half teaspoon of beef; one bay leaf; one small sprig of parsley; one small teaspoon of lemon juice. Clean the sweetbreads, and let them soak for one hour in two quarts of cold water into which two tablespoons of salt have been stirred. On taking them from the salt water drop them into a bowl of boiling water for two minutes; then arrange them in a deep baking-pan. Put the butter, herbs and vegetables in a frying-pan and set them on the stove. Cook slowly for fifteen minutes; then add the flour, and stir until the mixture becomes frothy. Add the water gradually, stirring all the time. When this liquid boils stir in the meat extract, salt, pepper and lemon juice. Cook for five minutes and strain over the sweetbreads. Cover the pan and put in a moderately hot oven. Cook for one hour, basting every fifteen minutes with the gravy in the pan. Arrange the sweetbreads on a warm dish, and pour brown mushroom sauce round them.
Two related dishes run together here: diced sweetbreads in a cream sauce baked in green pepper shells, and Maria Parloa's braised sweetbreads. Both depend on the same preparation — long soaking and a brief blanch — before any cooking proper begins.
- Sweetbreads, and what they areSweetbreads are the thymus and pancreas glands of a calf or lamb, not brain or spinal tissue. They are sold frozen or by special order from a butcher; a "pair" varies, but at roughly 3/4 to 1 lb a pair, three pairs is something like 2 1/4 to 3 lb of meat.
- Soak, blanch, pressThe hinge of any sweetbread dish. The salted soak draws out blood and the two-minute plunge into boiling water firms the tissue so the outer membrane peels away cleanly. Skip the blanch and the meat will not hold a dice.
- The missing butterThe first sauce says to blend "two tablespoons with the same quantity of flour." Two tablespoons of butter is meant — this is a standard thick white roux for a half cup of stock plus cream.
- "One-half teaspoon of beef"The braised version calls for beef extract, the concentrated paste sold as Bovril or Liebig's in this period. A half teaspoon of a modern concentrated bouillon paste is the equivalent; it is stirred into the liquid after it boils, and the liquid is then strained over the sweetbreads, leaving the vegetables and herbs behind.
- Oven heatNeither recipe gives a temperature. For the stuffed peppers, 'bake until a delicate brown' suggests a fairly brisk oven, in modern terms somewhere around 375-400F, until the filling is set and the crumbs coloured. Parloa's 'moderately hot oven' is usually read as about 375-400F for the covered hour of braising.
- The peppersSix peppers, with the inner fibre and white seeds removed, parboiled only until pliable so they still hold their shape. The recipe directs that the stem-end slice be cut off when they are partially cool.
- Button mushroomsCanned or bottled mushrooms, already cooked, were widely used in this period. If using fresh mushrooms, saute them in a little butter first and drive off their liquid, or the filling will be watery.
- YieldThe pepper dish serves six as a lunch or supper course. The braised sweetbreads serve six as well, sliced and sauced.
Sweetbreads were a fixture of respectable American cooking from the 1880s through the 1920s, prized as a delicate white meat that could be creamed, larded, broiled or braised, and generally regarded as a costly delicacy. The second recipe here is credited to Maria Parloa, who ran a cooking school in Boston and wrote some of the earliest widely circulated American cookery manuals; her name on a recipe in a household book functioned as a mark of reliability, much as a television cook's name does now. Serving a filling in a hollowed vegetable "case" was a period fashion for making a small quantity of expensive meat look like a composed course.