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Sweetbread Cutlets
Cut some cold cooked sweetbreads into round pieces, brush them over with beaten egg, then coat well with finely-grated breadcrumb that has been seasoned with pepper, salt, and a little dried parsley. Place a lump of butter in a fryingpan, and when it has melted put in the cutlets and fry them until they are nicely browned. Arrange them in a circle on a dish, with a small crouton of fried bread between each, pour a small quantity of thick brown gravy in the center, and serve.
Sweetbreads, English Style Wash the sweetbreads and parboil them; put them in a saucepan over the fire with barely sufficient white stock to cover, and let them stew gently for about twenty-five minutes. Add a seasoning of white pepper, salt, and a small quantity of mace, thicken the gravy with butter and flour and add a little cream and cucumber catsup. Pour the gravy over the sweetbreads, and serve young peas or French beans with them.
Sweetbreads, Financiere Wash and blanch the sweetbreads, then drain and press them between two plates until they are cold; trim and season them with pepper and salt; butter the bottom of a sautepan, put in the sweetbreads and fry until they are done on both sides, then pour in one teacupful of clear broth and reduce that also to a glaze. When well glazed put the sweetbreads on a dish and keep them hot while the following garnish is being prepared. Pour one-half pint of wine in the stewpan that the sweetbreads were cooked in, and when boiling strain the wine through a fine hair sieve, skim off the fat and boil it until reduced to half its original quantity. Peel four or five raw truffles, cut them in quarters, place them in the wine with one teacupful of brown sauce, and boil for five minutes. Put eighteen or twenty button mushrooms in the sauce, with the same quantity of small poached quenelles and sprinkle them with a little cayenne pepper. Pour the garnish all round the sweetbreads, and serve them while very hot.
Three sweetbread preparations run together in the original text, all of them assuming a kitchen brigade that has already washed, soaked, blanched and pressed the sweetbreads before service. That preliminary work is the hinge of every version here.
- Start with the preparation the text assumesSweetbreads must be soaked in several changes of cold water (an hour or more, until the water runs clear), then blanched in simmering salted water for a few minutes, cooled, and peeled of membrane. The first recipe simply says "cold cooked sweetbreads"; that is the product of this process, pressed flat between two plates under a weight until firm and cold enough to slice cleanly.
- What you are buyingVeal sweetbreads are sold as the rounded "heart" (the pancreas) and the elongated "throat" (the thymus); the heart is what slices into neat rounds for cutlets. Lamb sweetbreads are smaller and work for the Financiere version. Order ahead from a butcher and use within a day, as they are highly perishable.
- Old measuresA teacupful in period receipts is usually reckoned at somewhere between half a cup and three-quarters of a cup; this text does not define it. Half a pint is one cup. "Thick brown gravy" and "brown sauce" here most likely mean a reduced espagnole or demi-glace rather than pan drippings thickened with flour.
- The unnamed wineFinanciere sauce is traditionally built on Madeira, and that is almost certainly what is meant by the bare word "wine" here. Dry Madeira or a medium sherry gives the right result; the text's instruction to strain and reduce it by half concentrates it considerably.
- Cucumber catsupA nineteenth-century condiment of grated cucumber, onion, vinegar and spice, thin and sharp rather than sweet. It has effectively vanished; a spoonful of good cucumber pickle brine plus a little of the chopped pickle approximates its function, which is to cut the cream.
- Quenelles and trufflesThe quenelles are small poached dumplings of pounded veal or chicken forcemeat bound with egg and cream, shaped with two teaspoons. A modern cook can leave the truffles out or use a very small quantity of preserved truffle, added at the end rather than boiled for five minutes.
- Timing for the English styleTwenty-five minutes of gentle stewing in white stock is right for whole veal sweetbreads that have only been parboiled, but check with a knife tip at twenty; overcooked sweetbreads turn dense and grainy rather than creamy.
- Frying the cutletsButter alone browns fast and burns; a mix of butter and a neutral oil over medium heat gives the even color the recipe wants. The rounds are already cooked, so they need only two to three minutes a side to set the crumb.
- YieldFigure one pair of veal sweetbreads (roughly 1 lb before trimming) for two servings as a course, or four as part of a larger meal. The Financiere garnish as written, with eighteen to twenty mushrooms and as many quenelles, would stretch to a party of six or so.
Sweetbreads were a standard luxury of the American hotel menu at the turn of the twentieth century, and the three treatments here map the range of a large kitchen's repertoire: a plain breaded cutlet, a mild creamed "English style" with peas, and Financiere, the fullest French garnish of truffles, button mushrooms and quenelles bound in wine and brown sauce. The name financiere is generally traced to the idea of a financier's table, a garnish expensive enough to advertise the means of whoever ordered it, though that is traditional explanation rather than documented etymology. That the text explains none of the preliminary soaking, blanching and pressing suggests a readership already familiar with that work. Sweetbreads fell out of general American cooking in the second half of the twentieth century, as supermarket meat cases stopped carrying offal.