No. 1569

Sweetbreads au Chancelier

Ris de Veau au Chancelier

Soak and blanch the needed quantity of sweetbreads, then cut them across in two; fry these pieces in butter with a little fine shallot and parsley, adding lemon-juice, salt, pepper and nutmeg; when done lay them under a weight or in the press (Fig. 71); pare oval-shaped when cold. Reduce some chicken puree (No. 713) with an allemande sauce (No. 407). When it has cooled off cover one side of the sweetbreads with it, having the tops well rounded, then smooth the surface, dip in eggs, roll in bread-crumbs, level the bread-crumbs with the blade of a knife and fry them all to a fine color. Serve a supreme sauce (No. 547) separately into which chopped truffles have been added.

← No. 1568 Sweetbreads a la Theodora Veal No. 1570 Sweetbreads au Monarch →

For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer assumes a brigade and a shelf of mother sauces; the dish reduces to four manageable stages — purge and press the sweetbreads, mask them with a stiff chicken forcemeat-purée, crumb them, fry. The hinge is the pressing: without a cold, flat, firm sweetbread, the coating slides off in the fat.

Buying and preppingAsk for veal heart sweetbreads (the thymus is longer and stringier). A pair runs 3/4 to 1 lb and serves two to three as written. Soak in several changes of cold water, refrigerated, for 3-4 hours until the water runs clear.
Blanch means blanch"Soak and blanch" is 3-5 minutes in barely simmering salted water, then straight into ice water. Then peel away the outer membrane and any fat or tubes. Skipping this makes the later paring impossible.
The pressFig. 71 is a piece of professional kitchen equipment; the recipe itself allows the simpler alternative, 'under a weight'. Lay the cooled halves between two towel-lined plates or sheet pans with a couple of tins on top and refrigerate at least 2 hours, or overnight. They must be cold and flat before you pare them oval.
DonenessSweetbreads are offal and are best cooked through rather than left pink; around 160F at the centre is a safe working target. The initial butter fry with shallot, parsley and lemon should take them there; the second frying is only to colour the crumbs.
Allemande and supremeAllemande (No. 407) is a velouté finished with an egg-yolk-and-cream liaison and lemon; supreme (No. 547) is chicken velouté enriched with cream. Both are workable from a good chicken stock, and a thick, well-reduced velouté stands in for either at need.
The chicken pureeNo. 713 will be a chicken purée in the period manner, cooked white meat pounded and sieved. A food processor does it in seconds. Reduce it with the allemande until it is stiff enough to hold a domed shape on a spoon, then cool completely before masking — a slack mixture will not take crumbs.
Breading and fryingChill the masked and crumbed pieces at least 30 minutes before they meet fat. Fry in oil or clarified butter at 350-360F, masked side up first so the dome sets, 2-3 minutes a side to a deep gold.
TrufflesChopped fresh black truffle is the intent. Preserved truffle peelings or a small spoon of truffle paste stirred into the warm supreme at the last moment is the practical substitute; truffle oil is not.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer published The Epicurean in 1894 after some three decades as chef at Delmonico's in New York, and the veal chapter alone carries dozens of sweetbread preparations named for patrons, occasions and titles — Theodora, Monarch, and here au Chancelier. The names are largely decorative in the fashion of nineteenth-century French service: a chancellor's garnish carried no fixed definition, and Ranhofer was cataloguing his own house repertoire rather than a canon. What the entry does document precisely is the era's regard for sweetbreads, then a luxury of the first rank, and the workshop logic of a large kitchen: the soaking, blanching and pressing could be done a day ahead, the masking and crumbing in the afternoon, and the final frying to order in minutes. The cross-references to numbered sauces are the book's real architecture — nothing in it is meant to be cooked without the rest of the volume at hand.