No. 1559

Sweetbreads a la Marsilly

Ris de Veau a la Marsilly

Place in the center of a dish a cut out rice croustade foundation. Choose eight medium-sized throat sweetbreads, blanch and cool them in the press (No. 71), lard them with fine larding pork (No. 3, Fig. 52), and range in the bottom of a narrow saucepan lined with a braise; season and moisten to half their height with beef-stock (No. 194a); let this fall very slowly to a glaze, then remoisten to half their height with more of the same broth, reduce again, and pour a gill of Madeira or Marsala wine over the sweetbreads; allow the liquid to boil up twice before setting the saucepan in a slack oven to finish cooking the sweetbreads while basting and having them attain a nice color. Fry eight small and pared artichoke bottoms; drain and range them dome-shaped with small fresh green peas cooked English style (No. 2742) thickened with a well-buttered bechamel (No. 409). Dress the sweetbreads on the rice foundation with the artichoke bottoms around; send to the table accompanied by a sauce-boat of veloute (No. 415), reduced with the sweetbread stock.

← No. 1558 Sweetbreads a la Maltese Veal No. 1560 Sweetbreads a la Montebello →

For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer writes for a brigade with a stockpot always going and a larder of prepared bases, so the cross-references do most of the work. Here is what they stand for and where the dish actually turns.

Throat sweetbreadsThe elongated thymus from the neck, as opposed to the rounder, more prized heart (or belly) sweetbread. Eight medium throat sweetbreads is roughly 2 to 2 1/2 lb and serves eight. Any butcher selling veal sweetbreads today will most likely hand you heart breads, which work but cook a little faster.
Soak, blanch, pressThe step Ranhofer compresses into three words is the hinge of the dish. Soak in several changes of cold water until the water runs clear, bring slowly to a boil in fresh water, refresh in ice water, peel away the outer membrane and fat, then press flat between two trays under a light weight for an hour or more. Unpressed sweetbreads will not lard cleanly and will slump in the braise.
LardingFine lardons of fatback drawn through the surface with a larding needle. Hard to source and hard to buy needles for; barding the tops with a thin sheet of fatback or caul is the practical substitute, though it will not give the striped surface Ranhofer wanted.
A braise (No. 100-series)A braise -- Not a cooking method here but a bed: sliced carrot, onion, a bay leaf and thyme, with salt pork or ham rind laid underneath. It keeps the sweetbreads off the pan floor and perfumes the glaze.
A gillHalf a cup, 4 fl oz. That is the Madeira or Marsala, added after the second reduction and boiled up briefly to burn off the raw spirit.
Slack ovenA slow oven, roughly 250 to 300F. The glazing is done on the stovetop; the oven stage is a slow, basted finish that lacquers the tops. Reckon on something like 35 to 45 minutes after blanching for pressed throat breads.
Glaze twice, then againMoistening only to half height and letting it fall to a glaze, twice over, is what builds the sticky brown coating. Flooding the pan and simmering gives you boiled sweetbreads in gravy instead.
Peas cooked English styleBoiled hard and briefly in well-salted water, then drained, here bound with a buttered bechamel. Market peas of the period were often larger and starchier than modern petits pois; frozen small peas need two minutes at most.
The rice croustadeA firm rice pilaf packed into a mold, chilled until sliceable, then cut into a low round plinth. It is a plate architecture element, not a sauce sponge, and can be dropped without harming the dish.
Veloute finishStrain and degrease the sweetbread braising liquid, reduce it hard, and whisk it into the veal veloute. That reduction, not the wine, carries the flavor of the dish into the sauce boat.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer ran the kitchen at Delmonico's in New York across two spells, from 1862 to 1876 and again from 1879 to 1896, and The Epicurean (1894) is essentially that kitchen's working canon set down at length, with its thousand-odd cross-references standing in for the training a cook would have absorbed at the stove. Sweetbreads were a fixture of the American luxury restaurant menu in this period, and it is tempting to think their very laboriousness was the point: soaking, blanching, pressing, peeling, larding and glazing represent hours of skilled hands, which is arguably what a Delmonico's bill was buying. Ranhofer's garnish names are mostly commemorative rather than descriptive, attached to people, battles and places in the French manner, and Marsilly here follows that convention; unlike Montebello or Maltese, the reference is obscure and no firm attribution should be assumed. What the dish does tell you plainly is the shape of Gilded Age service: a molded starch plinth, larded meat set upon it, a ring of fried artichoke bottoms filled with creamed peas, and the sauce sent separately so it would not spoil the silhouette on its way through the dining room.