No. 1552

Sweetbreads a la Bussy

Ris de Veau a la Bussy

Prepare and cook the sweetbreads exactly as for a la Montebello (No. 1560), prepare a salpicon with sweetbreads cut in square pieces, also some truffles and mushrooms, all cut in three-sixteenths inch squares, lay these in an allemande sauce (No. 407), and let get cold. Cover one side of each sweetbread with this preparation, giving it a dome-shape, and lay over the salpicon a cream forcemeat (No. 75), dredging chopped truffles over all; besprinkle with butter and set them into a slack oven to heat without browning. A brown Madeira sauce (No. 492) is to be served at the same time, but separately.

← No. 1551 Sweetbreads a la Binda Veal No. 1553 Sweetbreads a la Columbus →

For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer writes for a brigade that already has stock, sauces and forcemeat standing by, and he cross-references rather than repeats. The whole dish depends on getting the sweetbreads properly soaked, blanched and pressed before any of the garnishing begins.

The hinge: preparing the sweetbreadsSoak them in several changes of cold water for a few hours until they lose their pink, then blanch in salted water, cool, and peel away membrane and sinew. Press between two plates under a weight until cold; a pressed sweetbread gives the flat, even base the mounded salpicon needs.
"Cook exactly as for a la Montebello"That entry is not reproduced here, so its method cannot be checked from this page; Ranhofer's sweetbreads of this kind are generally larded and braised. A gentle braise of 30-40 minutes for a whole veal sweetbread, kept covered so it does not dry, gives a comparable result.
Slack ovenAbout 275-300F. The point is to heat the assembled sweetbreads through and set the forcemeat without colouring the chopped truffle, so allow 20-25 minutes and check that the centre is hot.
SalpiconA dice of cooked ingredients bound in a thick sauce. Ranhofer's three-sixteenths of an inch is a scant 5 mm; cut everything the same size and bind it sparingly, since the mixture must be stiff enough to mound once cold.
Allemande sauceA veloute of veal or chicken stock finished with an egg-yolk and cream liaison, then lemon. Do not let it boil after the yolks go in. Ranhofer mixes the dice into the sauce and then lets it get cold; the mixture must be cold and stiff before it will mound.
Cream forcemeatNo. 75 is a pounded cream forcemeat: lean meat worked to a paste, sieved, then beaten over ice with cream until light; check the numbered entry for its exact make-up. A food processor does the pounding; keep everything cold and add the cream in stages so it does not break.
TrufflesPreserved truffle peelings, or finely chopped brown mushrooms with a few drops of truffle-scented oil, stand in for the dredging without pretending to be the same thing.
Madeira sauce, served apartA demi-glace reduced with Madeira, strained, and not boiled after the wine goes in. Served separately, the brown sauce is kept off the pale forcemeat and truffle crust.
YieldOne whole veal sweetbread per person, or two of the smaller lobes. Ranhofer gives no quantities at all; count on a generous cup of salpicon and about the same of forcemeat for four portions.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer ran the kitchens at Delmonico's in New York for more than thirty years, and The Epicurean (1894) is essentially that restaurant's working repertoire set down in print, which is why so many entries are a single paragraph pointing at four other numbers. The veal chapter alone carries dozens of sweetbread preparations, each named for a person or place in the manner of the period: Montebello, Binda, Columbus, and here Bussy, most likely one of the French Bussy titles that furnished names to nineteenth-century menus much as Talleyrand and Soubise did, rather than any documented creation for a named guest. Sweetbreads were a prestige cut in this era, expensive and awkward to handle, and dressing them with a truffled salpicon under a piped forcemeat crust shows the logic of grand-restaurant cooking: an already-costly item is rebuilt into something that could not possibly be produced at home.