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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 Shells
Cut four blanched sweetbreads into small slices, and stew them in a saucepan with one-half ounce of butter, one-half wineglassful of white wine, and three tablespoonfuls of mushroom liquor. Cook for ten minutes, and then add one gill of veloute sauce, six minced mushrooms and two truffles, also finely chopped. Season with one-half tablespoonful of salt, one teaspoonful of pepper, and one-half teaspoonful of grated nutmeg, and finish by adding two tablespoonfuls of cream or one-half ounce of butter. Fill eight table shells with this, sprinkle them with sifted breadcrumbs, pour over a few drops of clarified butter, and place them in the oven to brown slightly for six minutes longer. Serve on a hot dish with an ornamental paper over, and garnish with fried parsley.
A straightforward ris de veau ragout finished under heat in shells. The work is all in the preparation of the sweetbreads, which Oscar assumes has already been done.
- "Blanched" is doing a lot of workVeal sweetbreads need several hours of soaking in cold water changed repeatedly, then a gentle poach of about 15 minutes in salted water or light stock, then cooling under a weight and peeling away the outer membrane and any gristle. Only then are they ready to be sliced and stewed for the ten minutes given here.
- SourcingAsk a butcher for veal sweetbreads; the throat (thymus) glands are the ones usually wanted, though the heart or belly gland was also sold under the name. They are often frozen and may need ordering. Four of them is perhaps 1 1/2 to 2 lb before trimming, enough to fill the eight shells.
- Table shellsThese are scallop shells, or the metal or porcelain coquille dishes sold for the purpose. Ramekins work. Eight shells is a first course for eight.
- UnitsA gill is half a cup. A wineglassful was conventionally reckoned at about 2 fl oz, so half of one is roughly two tablespoons of white wine. Mushroom liquor is simply the strained cooking or soaking liquid from mushrooms.
- Cut the seasoningHalf a tablespoon of salt and a full teaspoon of pepper for this quantity of a sauce already built on veloute will taste harsh. Season to taste; a teaspoon of salt is closer to the mark, and the nutmeg should be a scrape rather than half a spoon.
- VelouteA blond roux thinned with veal or chicken stock, cooked until it coats a spoon. Half a cup is what the dish needs, so make it in advance rather than mid-recipe.
- TrufflesTwo whole black truffles, finely chopped, is a Waldorf indulgence. A teaspoon of chopped preserved truffle, or a few minced dried mushrooms with a drop of their soaking liquid, gives the dark note without the invoice.
- The browningNo temperature is given; six minutes to colour crumbs implies a hot oven, or a few minutes under the broiler. The filling is already cooked, so the aim is colour, not heat penetration.
- Fried parsleyDry sprigs dropped into 350F fat for 10 to 15 seconds, until they stop spitting and turn brilliant green. They go limp within minutes, so fry them last.
Sweetbreads served in shells were a fixture of American hotel and club menus from the 1880s through the 1920s, in the era when Oscar Tschirky was maitre d'hotel at the Waldorf: the thymus of a milk-fed calf was expensive, delicate, and read as unmistakably French to a New York dining room, which was exactly the point. The technique is standard coquille practice, the same logic that gives us coquilles St. Jacques, cooked filling in a shell, crumbed, glazed under heat, and sent out with a paper frill hiding the join. The "ornamental paper" and the fried parsley are the tell that this is service food rather than home food, meant to arrive at the table looking finished. Offal of this kind fell out of general American use after the Second World War, and sweetbreads are now largely encountered in restaurants, which is roughly where Oscar found them.