No. 1560

Sweetbreads a la Montebello

Ris de Veau a la Montebello

Blanch until firm to the touch some medium-sized sweetbreads that have been in soak for a few hours, then drain, refresh and pare by suppressing all the sinews and fat. Lay them in a sautoir lined with slices of fat pork, sliced onions and carrots and a bunch of parsley, moisten to half their height with beef-stock (No. 194a), let this liquid fall to a glaze and then remoisten; cover with a buttered paper and finish cooking in a slack oven. After they are done pare and set them in oval tin rings, two and a half by five-eighths of an inch in diameter and half an inch high; let them cool off in these under the pressure of a weight. Cut up the parings into small three-sixteenths inch dice; also some mushrooms and truffles; fry a chopped shallot in butter, add to it the mushrooms, the truffles and the sweetbreads, also a little veloute (No. 415), then season; when this preparation is cold, use it to cover one side of the sweetbreads, having it well rounded on the top, cover over with a layer of cream forcemeat (No. 75), and dredge the surface with finely chopped red tongue; place the sweetbreads on a buttered baking pan, pour melted butter over and the sweetbreads in a slack oven for twenty minutes; serve a Montebello sauce (No. 502) separately.

← No. 1559 Sweetbreads a la Marsilly Veal No. 1561 Sweetbreads a la Montpensier →

For the Modern Kitchen

A full Escoffier-era garnished sweetbread, written for a brigade with stock, veloute and forcemeat already on hand. The work is in the sequence, not in any one step.

Soaking and blanchingSeveral hours in cold water, changed once or twice, draws out blood and keeps the sweetbreads pale. Blanching means bringing them from cold water just to a simmer for a few minutes until the outside firms, then plunging into cold water so the membrane and fat peel away cleanly.
Buy the right glandRanhofer says only "medium-sized". The round heart sweetbread (pancreas) is generally preferred to the ragged throat gland (thymus). Order ahead from a butcher; the number served will depend on the size of the lobes.
Sautoir and fat porkA sautoir is a straight-sided saute pan with a lid; a shallow braiser or oven-safe skillet works. Fat pork is unsmoked pork fatback or salt pork blanched to remove salt; thick unsmoked bacon or thin-sliced pork belly substitutes.
Slack oven"Slack" or very slow is conventionally read as somewhere in the region of 275-325F; the book gives no figure. The braise should barely bubble, and the recipe puts the final twenty-minute bake in a slack oven too, only long enough to set the forcemeat and warm through.
Falling to a glazeLetting the stock reduce almost dry before remoistening builds a sticky lacquer on the meat and concentrates the braising liquid. Do it once, watch it closely, then add stock back to half the depth of the sweetbreads.
PressingThe oval rings are 2 1/2 in by 5/8 in and 1/2 in deep, essentially small forming rings. Any ring mold or even a cut-down can with a weighted plate on top gives the same result: cooled under pressure the sweetbread holds a flat, sliceable shape.
Veloute and cream forcemeatVeloute (No. 415) is a light veal or chicken stock thickened with a blond roux; a stiff, well-reduced version is what binds the salpicon. The cream forcemeat (No. 75) is a raw veal or chicken mousseline - lean meat pureed with egg white and cream, kept cold - which is why the final bake must be gentle enough not to break it.
Red tongue and truffles"Red tongue" is cured, cooked beef tongue, chopped fine for color; corned or pickled tongue from a deli is the nearest thing. Fresh truffle can be replaced with a spoonful of chopped preserved truffle or, less faithfully, with more mushroom plus a few drops of truffle juice.
The sauceMontebello sauce (No. 502) is served separately, so nothing on the plate needs to survive the oven. If you are not making Ranhofer's sauce, a reduced veal or chicken jus finished with butter serves the dish better than anything cream-based, which would double the mousseline.

A Little History

This comes from Charles Ranhofer's The Epicurean (1894), the record of his decades as chef at Delmonico's in New York, and it belongs to the long French tradition of naming garnishes after battles and the men who won them. Montebello, in northern Italy, saw a French victory in 1800, after which Jean Lannes was created duc de Montebello, and a second French victory there in 1859 under Napoleon III; nineteenth-century kitchens attached such names freely to compositions, so the link between title and dish is commemorative rather than descriptive. Sweetbreads themselves were a luxury of the period, prized for their delicacy and priced accordingly, and the treatment here is characteristic of Ranhofer's method: braise, press flat, mask with a salpicon and a mousseline, gild the surface, and send a separate sauce to the table. The dependence on cross-referenced numbers - stock 194a, veloute 415, forcemeat 75, sauce 502 - shows how the book was meant to work, as a manual for a staffed kitchen where those preparations stood ready every day.