Sweet-Breads
These are great delicacies. There are two in a calf, one from neck called "throat sweet-bread," the other from near the heart called "heart sweet-bread." The latter is most delicate. Select the largest. The color should be clear and a shade darker than the fat. Before cooking let the sweet-breads lie for half an hour in luke-warm water, then throw into boiling water to blanch and harden, and then into cold water to cool; after which draw off the buter casing, remove the little pipes, and cut into thin slices. Sweetbreads do not keep well, and should be fresh, and must be kept in a cold, dry place. They should be thoroughly cooked. In larding sweet-bread, take deep, long stitches, or they will break out. To broil, prepare as above, spread plenty of butter over them, and broil on a gridiron over hot coals, turning often. To fricassee, cut up the remnant of a cooked sweet-bread in small pieces, prepare a gravy by melting two table-spoons butter and stirring in a table-spoon flour, and adding a tea-cup of soup stock or water; lay pieces of sweet-bread in pan with gravy, season with pepper and salt, and boil up once. Garnish with sliced lemon or pieces of fried bread. If sweet-breads are fresh, cut into thin slices, let simmer slowly in the gravy for three-quarters of an hour, and add a well-beaten egg, two table-spoons cream, and a spoonful chopped parsley; stir all together for a few minutes, and serve immediately. To fry, parboil five minutes, wipe dry, lard with narrow strips of salt fat pork with a larding-needle, put a very little butter or lard into a frying-pan, lay in the sweet-breads when it is hot, and fry to a crisp brown, turning often. Or, slice thin, sprinkle over grated nutmeg and chopped parsley, dip into a batter made of one cup milk, one egg, one cup of flour, a pinch of salt, and a half teaspoon baking-powder, and fry like fritters. To roast, parboil large ones, and, when cold, lard with salt pork as above. Roast brown in a moderate oven, basting often with butter and water. Serve with white sauce or tomato sauce poured over them. For sweet-breads with green pease, lard five sweet-breads with strips of salt pork (project evenly about half an inch on the upper side), put on the fire with a half pint water, and let stew slowly for half an hour, take out and put in a small dripping-pan with a little butter and a sprinkle of flour; brown slightly, add half a gill of mingled milk and water, and season with pepper; heat a half pint of cream, and stir it in the gravy in the pan. Have pease ready boiled and seasoned, place the sweet-breads in the center of the dish, pour the gravy over them, and put pease around them.
A compendium entry rather than a single recipe: preparation first, then broiled, fricasseed, fried, roasted and stewed-with-peas variations. The preparation is the part that matters most; everything after it is straightforward cookery.
- What you are buyingThe "heart sweet-bread" is the pancreas, the "throat sweet-bread" the thymus of a young calf. Butchers today usually sell the pancreas (sometimes called stomach or belly sweetbread) as the premium item, which matches the book's preference. Order ahead; they are rarely in a supermarket case.
- The soak and blanch is not optionalHalf an hour in lukewarm water draws blood, but a cold-water soak of 2-3 hours, changed once or twice, gives a paler result. Blanch about 3 minutes in barely simmering salted water, then plunge into ice water. Skipping this leaves the membrane welded on and the texture spongy.
- "Draw off the buter casing"A typo for outer casing: the translucent membrane and the tubes and gristle beneath it. Peel it while the sweetbreads are still damp and cool. Many cooks then press them between two plates under a weight in the refrigerator for an hour, which firms them for slicing and frying.
- Freshness and holdingThe warning that they "do not keep well" is accurate. Offal spoils faster than muscle meat. Blanch the day you buy them, keep at 34-38F, and use within a day of blanching.
- The fricassee timingThree-quarters of an hour of simmering will reduce fresh sliced sweetbreads to mush; 8-10 minutes in the gravy is enough once they have been blanched. The instruction reflects a period conviction that offal must be cooked hard.
- Do not boil after the egg goes inThe egg-and-cream finish is a liaison. Once it is stirred in, hold the pan below a simmer, under about 180F, or the egg will curdle and the sauce will break. Serve immediately as directed.
- A gillA gill is half a cup, so "half a gill of mingled milk and water" is a quarter cup. A tea-cup of stock in the fricassee is usually reckoned at about three-quarters of a cup, though the measure was never standardized.
- Oven and lardingA moderate oven is usually reckoned at 350-375F; the parboiled larded sweetbreads want only a short time in the oven with frequent basting. Larding needles are now specialty tools; wrapping in thin bacon or barding fat gives similar protection with less breakage, which is what the "deep, long stitches" caution is about.
- YieldFigure one whole sweetbread per person; the peas-and-cream version, made with five, would serve about five.
Sweetbreads occupy a peculiar place in nineteenth-century American cooking: they were genuine luxury food, expensive in city markets, yet they were a byproduct of veal slaughter and so appeared wherever calves were killed young. The name is old and its logic is not fully recovered; the "bread" element is generally traced to an Old English word for flesh or roast meat, and "sweet" is usually explained by the mild, unassertive flavor that distinguishes the gland from liver or kidney. That mildness is why the book's methods are all about enrichment rather than masking, larding with salt pork, basting with butter, finishing with cream and egg. The instructions for larding needles and gridirons over coals mark the entry as belonging to the formal end of the household repertoire: dinner-party food.