Sweetbreads a la Columbus

A shorthand entry from a book written for professional kitchens: Ranhofer assumes you already have braised sweetbreads, a forcemeat, and a sauce base on hand. Read it as an assembly plan and build the four components separately.

• Start with the sweetbreads themselvesVeal sweetbreads (thymus and pancreas) need soaking in several changes of cold water for a few hours until pale, then blanching, refreshing, peeling of membrane, and pressing flat between two trays under a light weight while they chill. Without that pressing they will not hold a neat shape or take studding.
• "Stud" means lardStudding is piquing the surface with short lardons of fatback, and in this style often strips of truffle or pickled tongue, inserted with a larding needle at even intervals. It is decorative as much as anything; strips of firm fat draped over the top and secured before braising get you close if you have no needle.
• Braising, not boilingA white braise on a bed of aromatics with enough stock to come halfway up, covered, in a moderate oven, basting so the surface glazes. Ranhofer gives no temperature or time here. The braising liquid is not incidental ecipe requires it for the sauce, so keep it.
• Croutons of forcemeatThese are not toast. Ranhofer's No. 78 is a foie gras forcemeat, shaped or cut into small flat rounds, egg-washed and fried in butter to set a crust. A modern equivalent is a firm chicken-liver or foie gras farce bound with panade and egg, cut with a cutter slightly wider than each sweetbread.
• Cock's combs and kidneysCombs and cockerel testes (the "kidneys" of nineteenth-century menus) were standard garnish items, blanched, peeled of their skin and simmered in a white blanc until tender. Neither is easy to find now; you would need a specialist poulterer. Small braised sweetbread nuggets or button mushrooms turned and glazed are the usual stand-ins.
• Colbert sauceIn classical usage this is a meat glaze finished with butter, lemon juice and chopped parsley, sometimes with a little madeira; Ranhofer's No. 451 is referenced but not reproduced here. Here it is built from the strained braising stock, reduced hard until it coats a spoon -- half-glaze is roughly the stage where a cooled spoonful sets to a soft jelly. Mount the butter off the heat or it will split.
• Order of workSauce reduction is the bottleneck, so strain and start it the moment the sweetbreads come out of the braise, keeping them warm and covered. Fry the forcemeat croutons last so they are still crisp when the sauce goes over.
• YieldRanhofer gives none. One pressed sweetbread lobe per person on its crouton is a first course; figure two per person for a main, and about 1½ lb of raw sweetbreads to serve four as a starter.