No. 1573

Sweetbreads in Papers

Ris de Veau en Papillotes

Split some blanched, cold and pressed sweetbreads in two through their thickness; sauté them in butter seasoning with salt and pepper. Chop up one small onion and one shallot, lay them in a saucepan with melted fat pork to fry colorless, adding six ounces of chopped fresh mushrooms; reduce the moisture of these, season, and add six ounces of cooked ham cut in small one-eight inch dice; heat the whole well, then add chopped parsley. Cut heart-shaped pieces from a sheet of paper, nine inches long by five wide; oil and lay them on the table; cover one side with thin slices of fat pork or cooked ham, lay a little of the preparation on top, then a piece of sweetbread, and finish with another layer of the preparation; fold the paper three-quarters around and pour a little Madeira sauce (No. 492) through the opening and finish folding so as to enclose all hermetically; range these "papillotes" in the serving-dish, place it in the oven, basting over carefully with a little sweet oil. They should be browned, but not blackened and swollen to double their original size.

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For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer assumes you already know the standing preparation of sweetbreads and can pull a Madeira sauce off the stove; the recipe proper is really the stuffing and the folding. A few notes make it workable in a modern kitchen.

Blanched, cold and pressedThe unstated first step: soak the sweetbreads in several changes of cold water until pale, poach gently, cool, peel off membrane and fat, then press flat between two plates under a weight for several hours in the refrigerator. Only then are they firm enough to split through their thickness without collapsing.
Oven heatRanhofer gives no temperature or time; he only says the papers should brown without blackening and swell to double size, and that they be basted with a little sweet oil. That implies a hot, fast oven — around 425F for roughly 10 to 12 minutes is a reasonable modern reading — watching them rather than timing them. A slow oven will steam the parcels and leave the paper limp and pale.
The paperKitchen parchment is the modern equivalent of the oiled writing paper he specifies, and it browns and puffs the same way. Cut the heart shape at 9 by 5 inches as written; foil will not brown, and the browned, blistered case is the point of the dish.
The hinge: a tight seal"Hermetically" is not decorative language. Fold the open edge over in small overlapping pleats, working around the curve, and twist the point of the heart to lock it. If steam escapes, the parcel does not swell and the sauce dries onto the paper.
Fat porkPork fat in slices for lining and melting, the kind used for larding rather than bacon; in Ranhofer's usage this is usually fresh fatback, though 'fat pork' of the period can also mean salt pork. Sliced thin as a lining it bastes the sweetbread from below. Blanched salt pork, well rinsed, is the closest supermarket substitute; a slice of prosciutto works if you accept the saltiness.
The mushroom preparationThis is a duxelles with ham. Cook the chopped mushrooms until the pan is dry and they begin to fry rather than steam — six ounces will shed a surprising amount of water, and any of it left in the parcel will waterlog the paper.
Madeira sauceNo. 492 is a reduced brown sauce finished with Madeira. A modern demi-glace loosened with a splash of dry Madeira serves. Use about a tablespoon per parcel; more will pool and leak.
Quantity and servingSix ounces each of mushrooms and ham makes enough filling for roughly six to eight parcels, or three to four sweetbreads split in two. Serve them unopened on the plate and let each person cut the paper — the aroma released is the whole theatre of the dish.

A Little History

En papillote cooking — sealing food in a folded paper case so it steams in its own perfume — was long established in French kitchens by the time Charles Ranhofer published The Epicurean in 1894, and the heart-shaped paper cut is the classical form. Ranhofer ran the kitchens at Delmonico's in New York from 1862, in two spells with a break in the later 1870s, and dishes like this one show why the restaurant mattered: a single course carries a poached and pressed sweetbread, a duxelles, a diced ham garnish, a Madeira-based brown sauce and a paper case that has to inflate at the table. Sweetbreads themselves were a standard luxury of the period, treated in the book across a dozen or more preparations, delicate enough to justify elaborate handling. The dish belongs to a moment when American fine dining was arguing, largely through Delmonico's, that it could hold its own with Paris.