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Fricassee of Lambs' Sweetbreads
Blanch three lambs' sweetbreads, parboil them in broth or stock, and cut into slices. Roll them well in flour and if the slices are too thick cut them in halves. Put them into a fryingpan with butter and a few bearded oysters and fry to a yellow color. Then drain off the butter, pour in two breakfast cupfuls of rich gravy, add a few asparagus points, two or three finely chopped chives or shallots, season with pepper, salt and grated nutmeg. Pour in one wineglassful of white wine, and simmer for ten minutes or so. Beat the yolks of three eggs in a basin, add a little of the broth and then stir it in with the remainder, replace the pan at the side of the fire and stir, without boiling, until the gravy is moderately thick. Serve on a hot dish with slices of lemon for a garnish.
A classic egg-yolk liaison built on offal that needs careful preparation before it ever reaches the pan. The whole dish turns on the last step: once the yolks go in, the sauce must never boil.
- The hinge: the liaisonAfter the yolks are tempered with hot gravy and returned to the pan, keep the sauce below a simmer — somewhere around 175-180F. A boil scrambles the yolks and the sauce breaks into grainy threads that are difficult to bring back.
- Blanching sweetbreads"Blanch" here is the full preliminary treatment: soak in several changes of cold water for a few hours to draw the blood, then bring to a bare simmer, cool, and peel away the outer membrane and any tubes. Pressing them under a weighted plate while they cool makes them firm enough to slice cleanly.
- Bearded oystersThe beard is the dark, frilly mantle edge around the oyster; trimming it removes the toughest part.
- Oyster timingFrying the oysters alongside the sweetbreads and then simmering ten minutes will shrink them to rubber. Add them in the last minute or two of simmering, or fry them briefly, set aside, and return them with the yolks.
- Breakfast cupfulA breakfast cup is larger than a teacup — reckon 8 to 10 fl oz. Two of them is roughly 2 to 2 1/2 cups of stock or veal gravy. A wineglassful is about 2 fl oz.
- "Rich gravy"Not pan drippings but a reduced brown or veal stock with body from gelatine. Reduced homemade stock, or stock lightly thickened with a blond roux, gives the right consistency for the yolks to finish.
- Asparagus pointsBlanch the tips separately until just tender and fold them in near the end; ten minutes in gravy leaves them olive-drab and limp.
- YieldThree lambs' sweetbreads are a small quantity; expect perhaps two servings, and treat any figure as an estimate since the recipe states none. Serve immediately — the sauce will not hold.
Fricassee — whose name is often traced to a compound of the French frire, to fry, and casser, to break up, though the etymology is uncertain — describes roughly this method: pieces cooked in butter, moistened with stock and wine, and finished off the heat with a yolk-and-cream liaison. Sweetbreads (the thymus and pancreas of young animals) were among the most prized items on late nineteenth-century American hotel menus, and lambs' sweetbreads, being smaller and more delicate than veal, commanded particular respect. The pairing with oysters is thoroughly of its moment: oysters were abundant and cheap in New York through the 1890s, and a kitchen of the period might use them as a garnish and flavouring the way a later cook would use mushrooms. The lemon garnish is not decoration alone — the acidity cuts the richness of butter, yolks and glandular meat, a balance the recipe otherwise leaves entirely to the diner.