No. 1555

Sweetbreads a l'Ecarlate

Ris de Veau a l'Ecarlate

Select eight medium very white heart sweetbreads, after they are soaked and blanched, press them slightly in the press (Fig. 71), and lard afterward with fat salt pork, cook them in a pan with very little moistening, basting them frequently with their own juice, so as to glaze them a fine color. Boil a quarter of a pound of coarse macaroni in salted water, and when tender, drain and refresh it in tepid salted water; spread it out lengthwise on a towel and cut it up into a quarter of an inch lengths; as quickly as they are cut set them upright on to a buttered sheet and with a cornet filled with quenelle forcemeat (No. 89,) stuff the empty space to half its heighth, and lay small round bits of truffle cut the same size on top, then cover the whole with a buttered paper, heat the bottom of the sheet lightly, then set it into a slow oven for one minute to poach the forcemeat; detach the pieces from the pan taking them up one by one and lay them on the truffle side against the bottom and sides of a buttered plain border mold; fill in the empty space of the mold with some of the same forcemeat, covering over all with a buttered paper; poach this border for twenty-five to thirty minutes in a bain-marie, so that the forcemeat hardens to the touch. When prepared to use, unmold the border on a dish and fill the center with the sweetbreads. Have sixteen round pieces of unsmoked beef tongue, and sixteen rounds of truffles, all an inch and a quarter in diameter, by one-eighth of an inch in thickness; heat them in a little meat glaze (No. 402) and Madeira. Dress them in a ring around the sweetbreads on the crest of the border, alternating the colors; cover the bottom of the dish with half-glaze sauce (No. 413), and serve some of the same sauce separately, reduced with a puree of tomatoes (No. 730), butter, grated parmesan, and minced mushrooms.

← No. 1554 Sweetbreads a la Conti Veal No. 1556 Sweetbreads a l'Eugenie →

For the Modern Kitchen

A full Ranhofer set piece: glazed larded sweetbreads served inside a poached forcemeat border studded with cut macaroni and truffle. The border is the work; the sweetbreads themselves are straightforward.

Start with the sweetbreads a day aheadOrder veal sweetbreads in advance; the "heart" sweetbread he specifies is the rounder, meatier lobe rather than the ragged throat piece. Soak in several changes of cold water for 3-4 hours until they lose their pink, blanch 5 minutes, then peel the membrane and press flat between two trays with a weight in the refrigerator overnight. Whatever the press in Fig. 71 looks like, a sheet pan and a few cans do the same thing.
"Cook them in a pan with very little moistening"This is braise-glazing: barely a film of stock in a covered pan, then uncovered at the end while you baste until the liquid reduces to a shining coat. Figure 20-25 minutes total for pressed medium sweetbreads. Overcooked sweetbreads turn grainy, so stop when they are just firm and springy.
LardingFat salt pork threaded through the meat with a larding needle. Rinse the salt pork first, and chill the lardons hard so they slide rather than smear. Thin sheets of pork fatback tied around each sweetbread will get you most of the way if you have no needle.
Coarse macaroni means wide tubesNot elbows. Use the widest tube you can find, true long macaroni or a large smooth rigatoni-sized tube, so that a quarter-inch length gives a ring with a hole big enough to pipe into. Cook it a touch past al dente or it will crack when cut.
CornetA paper cone (or a piping bag) for the forcemeat. No. 89 is one of his cross-referenced quenelle forcemeats: pounded lean meat with panade, egg and cream, sieved, and kept very cold.
"A slow oven for one minute"A slow oven is conventionally reckoned at around 275-300F, though he gives no figure, and one minute is not a typo. The rings only need their forcemeat set enough to hold together while you transfer them, truffle side down, into the mold. Warming the bottom of the sheet first loosens the butter so they lift cleanly.
Poaching the borderA bain-marie means the mold stands in hot water, not boiling water. Hold the water around 170-180F and give it 25-30 minutes until the forcemeat is firm to the touch; a rolling boil will make it swell, weep and pull away from the pattern. Let it rest 10 minutes before unmolding.
Unsmoked beef tongueHe means brine-cured (corned) tongue, cooked, which is what makes it scarlet. A cooked cured tongue from a good deli works; smoked tongue will read wrong against the truffle. Slice discs an eighth of an inch thick, the same gauge as the truffle rounds, and warm them only through in the glaze and Madeira.
The saucesNo. 413 half-glaze is demi-glace; No. 402 meat glaze is stock reduced to a syrup. The sauce sent separately is demi-glace finished with tomato puree, butter, grated parmesan and minced mushrooms, which is close to a sauce italienne. Truffles can be replaced with large black olives or blanched black trumpet mushrooms for the color contrast, at some loss of the point.
YieldEight sweetbreads with sixteen tongue rounds and sixteen truffle rounds indicate eight servings, one sweetbread and four rounds (two tongue, two truffle) each.

A Little History

À l'écarlate means "in scarlet," and in nineteenth-century French kitchens the phrase pointed to salt-cured beef tongue, langue à l'écarlate, whose brine turned the meat a bright pink; the name here most likely describes the alternating ring of red tongue and black truffle around the border rather than anything done to the sweetbreads. Charles Ranhofer, chef at Delmonico's in New York for more than three decades, published The Epicurean in 1894 as a working record of that kitchen, and the veal chapter carries dozens of sweetbread preparations because sweetbreads were among the most prestigious things a restaurant could sell: delicate, perishable, said in the trade to be available only two to a calf, and therefore a test of both the buyer and the cook. The construction is pure haute-cuisine logic of the period, in which a dish was expected to arrive as an architectural object, and the cross-referenced numbers throughout the text show how completely that style depended on a brigade with stock, glaze and forcemeat already standing ready.