No. 1575

Sweetbreads Larded and Glazed with Gravy

Ris de Veau Piques et Glaces au Jus

Prepare the sweetbreads as explained in No. 1550; when blanched and stiffened lard them in two sections as shown in Fig. 332, with medium lardons (No. 3, Fig. 52). Line a saucepan with slices of fat pork, cut up onions and carrots, a bunch of parsley garnished with thyme and bay leaf and some veal parings, lay the sweetbreads over and moisten with stock (No. 194a); season with salt and whole peppers then cover with a buttered paper. Boil up and finish to cook in a slack oven for forty-five minutes, basting frequently during the time; glaze and let assume a good color. Strain the stock through a fine sieve, skim off its fat and reduce it to the consistency of a light syrup. Dish up the sweetbreads and pour the gravy around.

← No. 1574 Sweetbreads Larded and Glazed with Cepes Bor Veal No. 1576 Sweetbreads, Parisian Style →

For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer assumes you have already read No. 1550 and No. 194a, which is most of the work: this entry is really a braise on a bed of aromatics with a lardoon step in the middle. The points below fill in what the cross-references and the period vocabulary leave out.

Preparing the sweetbreads firstThe standard preparation of the period, which No. 1550 sets out, runs: soak in several changes of cold water until they run pale, blanch in simmering water until firm, refresh in cold water, and peel away the outer membrane and gristle. Pressing them between two plates under a light weight while they cool is usual, and helps them take a lardon and hold a clean shape.
Which sweetbreadThe throat or neck sweetbread (thymus) is the elongated one; the round, smoother heart or belly sweetbread (pancreas) is the prized cut and the one that larding suits. Veal sweetbreads are an order-ahead item from a butcher, not a supermarket case.
LardingMedium lardons (the book's No. 3 size, Fig. 52) are strips of firm back fat, threaded through the surface with a larding needle so the ends stand proud in even rows. Chill the fat hard first or it smears. Without a larding needle the same result can be had by draping thin sheets of back fat or fatback over the sweetbreads and tying them, though you lose the studded appearance of Fig. 332.
Lining the panThis bed of fat pork, sliced onion and carrot, parsley, thyme and bay is the braising foundation Ranhofer uses throughout: it keeps the meat off the metal and flavours the braising liquid. Any heavy saucepan or braising pan just wide enough to hold the sweetbreads in one layer will do.
Stock No. 194aOne of the book's stocks; an unsalted low-sodium veal or chicken stock is the practical substitute. The recipe says only to moisten, and a braising depth rather than enough to poach suits the method.
Slack ovenAround 300-325F. The point is a bare tremble at the surface for the full forty-five minutes. A buttered paper cut to the pan's diameter, laid directly on the meat, keeps the exposed tops from drying while they baste.
Whole peppersWhole black peppercorns, added to the braise and strained out later, not ground pepper. Six or eight is plenty for a pan of two or three sweetbreads.
GlazingThe sweetbreads are glazed at the end of the braise, in the oven, by continuing to baste with the reducing pan liquid until the surface is lacquered and the lardons have browned; the strained, skimmed stock is only reduced for the gravy afterwards. Build it up in thin coats rather than one thick one.
The sauce and the yieldStrain, skim thoroughly, then reduce until the liquid coats a spoon and just barely runs. It should not be thickened with flour. Figure one whole sweetbread per person as a course; two good-sized ones serve two to three.

A Little History

The Epicurean (1894) is Charles Ranhofer's summation of some thirty years as chef at Delmonico's in New York, and its veal chapter carries dozens of sweetbread preparations because sweetbreads were, in the restaurant French of the period, a luxury entree in the old sense: a dish served between the fish and the roast, delicate enough to justify elaborate garnish. Larding was the standard answer to the problem that a sweetbread has almost no fat of its own and browns poorly; the rows of white lardons visible on the finished piece were as much a display of kitchen technique as a matter of taste, which is why Ranhofer bothers to illustrate the pattern in Fig. 332. The book's habit of referring backward and forward by number reflects how it was meant to be used, not as a collection of standalone recipes but as a professional system in which stocks, foundations and basic preparations are made once and drawn on all day.