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Stewed Lambs' Sweetbreads
Blanch the sweetbreads and steep them in cold water for half an hour, then place them in a stewpan with some button onions, boiled asparagus tops, and a small piece of mace; season with salt and pepper to taste. Beat the yolks of two eggs, together with one-half teacupful of cream and one tablespoonful of finely-chopped parsley. Knead one ounce of flour, put it in with the sweetbreads, and let them simmer at the side of the fire for half an hour. Stir in the eggs, cream and parsley with the sweetbreads, grate in a small quantity of nutmeg, and stir the sauce at the side of the fire for a few minutes, but do not let it boil again or the eggs will curdle. When ready place the sweetbreads on a hot dish, pour the sauce over, and serve.
A late-Victorian white stew finished with an egg-and-cream liaison. The recipe assumes you know how to handle sweetbreads and how to hold a pan at the cool edge of a coal range; both need translating.
- The hinge: the liaisonOnce the yolks and cream go in, the sauce must stay below a simmer — roughly 175-180F. A boil scrambles the yolks into grains, which is exactly what the last line warns against. Temper the eggs with a ladle of the hot cooking liquid before they go into the pan.
- "At the side of the fire"On a range, the side of the fire was the cool zone. On a modern hob this is the lowest setting, or a heat diffuser, with the surface barely trembling.
- Blanching and steepingSweetbreads are soaked in several changes of cold water to draw out blood, then brought slowly to a boil and refreshed in cold water. Only after that can you peel away the membrane and outer fat, which the recipe takes as read. The half-hour cold steep here follows the blanch and firms them.
- The missing liquidNothing is said about what the sweetbreads simmer in. Add enough light chicken or veal stock to barely cover — perhaps 2 cups — or the ounce of flour will have nothing to thicken.
- "Knead one ounce of flour""Knead" implies working the flour to a paste with butter, i.e. a beurre manié: one ounce is roughly 3½ tablespoons of flour, worked with about an equal weight of butter and dropped into the hot liquid in pieces so it disperses rather than lumping.
- A teacupfulTeacup measures in books of this period were not standardised, being reckoned anywhere from about 4 to 6 fl oz. The half-teacupful of cream called for here is therefore something like 2 to 3 fl oz.
- Button onions and maceButton onions are small whole pickling onions, peeled and left whole; frozen pearl onions stand in. A blade of mace is the lacy covering of nutmeg — fish it out before saucing, as it is not meant to be eaten.
- SourcingLamb sweetbreads are smaller and more delicate than veal and generally need ordering from a butcher. Veal sweetbreads work but want longer trimming and pressing. Allow about 6 oz per person; the recipe gives no weight of sweetbreads, so the yield is left open.
Oscar Tschirky, the Swiss-born maître d'hôtel whose name carried the Waldorf, published his cook book in 1896, and its kitchen chapters preserve the French-inflected hotel cooking that a New York dining room of the 1890s expected. Sweetbreads — the thymus and pancreas glands of a young animal — were then a luxury item rather than an oddity, appearing on hotel and club menus creamed, braised, larded, or set in patty shells, and lamb sweetbreads in particular were prized for their fineness. The finish here, a liaison of yolks and cream held below the boil, is the classic technique behind a blanquette or a fricassée, and the warning against boiling is the same one found in French kitchen manuals of the period.