No. 1572

Sweetbread Fritters, Cream Sauce

Beignets de Ris de Veau, Sauce Crème

Soak and blanch a sufficient quantity of sweetbreads; suppress the windpipes and fat, and cut them in two across through their thickness, then lay them in a tureen with finely shredded chives and shallots, salt, pepper, allspice, lemon juice and a little oil; keep them in a cool place for one hour turning them over occasionally, then drain them on a cloth carefully removing every vestige of herbs; dip the pieces into a frying paste (No. 137) not having it too thick, and fry them slowly until they are cooked and have acquired a fine color, then drain and dress on folded napkins, garnish the top with fried parsley. Serve with a cream sauce (No. 454) in a sauce-boat.

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For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer assumes you know how to bring a raw sweetbread to the point where it can be marinated and battered. That preliminary work is most of the dish; the frying is quick.

Soak and blanchSoak the sweetbreads in several changes of cold water, refrigerated, until the water runs clear — several hours or overnight. Blanch by bringing them from cold water to a bare simmer for 3-5 minutes, then chill in ice water; this firms them so they can be peeled and sliced.
"Suppress the windpipes and fat"Suppress here means remove, not silence. After blanching, peel off the outer membrane and pull away the tubes, gristle and fat. Veal sweetbreads sold as such include both the thymus and the pancreas; the rounder, cleaner 'heart' sweetbread — the lower lobe of the thymus — is the better choice for fritters.
Press before slicingNot in the text, but a common technique in classical French practice: after blanching, set the sweetbreads between two plates with a weight for an hour in the refrigerator. They slice cleanly in two through their thickness and hold their shape in the batter.
The marinadeThis is a short herb-and-oil marinade in the French sense, not a brine. The recipe gives one hour, and there is little to gain by going longer — the lemon juice will begin to firm the surface. Wipe every scrap of chive and shallot away or it will burn black in the fat.
Frying paste No. 137Frying paste No. 137 is a light batter of the period type — flour, liquid, a little oil and salt, lightened with beaten egg white. Check No. 137 for Ranhofer's exact proportions. Thinned as directed here it should coat the back of a spoon and slide off, not cling.
"Fry them slowly"'Slowly' here means moderate rather than fierce heat — cooler than you would use for a thin fritter. The sweetbread is already blanched, so you are cooking the batter through and heating the interior. Hotter fat colors the crust before the center warms.
Fried parsleyDry the parsley sprigs completely and drop them in the fat for 10-15 seconds only; wet parsley spits violently. They should stay green and go brittle, not brown.
Cream sauce No. 454Cream sauce No. 454 is a white sauce finished with cream; consult No. 454 for Ranhofer's base rather than assuming a modern version. Serve it separately, as directed, so the batter stays crisp.
YieldA pair of veal sweetbreads, about 1 to 1 1/4 lb before trimming, gives four to six fritters and serves three or four as a course.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer ran the kitchens at Delmonico's in New York across several stretches between the 1860s and the mid-1890s, and The Epicurean (1894) is essentially the house repertoire written down, numbered and cross-referenced like a catalogue, which is why this recipe points you elsewhere for the batter and the sauce. Sweetbreads were a luxury item on American restaurant menus of the period, expensive because each calf yields so little and because the gland spoils fast; their appearance in a dozen guises across this section is a fair index of what a Delmonico's patron expected to pay for. Turning them into beignets — piled on a folded napkin with fried parsley — is a straightforwardly French treatment, and the napkin service, often said to have been meant to absorb any remaining fat at the table, was a formality that survived in grand hotel dining rooms well into the twentieth century.