No. 1578

Sweetbreads, with Quenelles

Ris de Veau aux Quenelles

The sweetbreads are to be prepared and cooked as for a la Conti (No. 1554); when done range them in a circle and garnish the middle with small bead-shaped quarter inch quenelles; cover with a half-glaze sauce (No. 413) so as to glaze the sweetbreads, and serve a Madeira sauce (No. 492) in a separate sauce-boat.

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For the Modern Kitchen

This is one of Ranhofer's assembly entries: it assumes you can turn to three other numbers in the book for the actual work. Read it as a plating formula for cooked sweetbreads, forcemeat dumplings, and two sauces.

What you actually have to makeSweetbreads prepared as for a la Conti (No. 1554, not reproduced here; Ranhofer's sweetbread bases generally involve soaking, blanching, trimming and braising), small veal quenelles, a half-glaze to coat, and a Madeira sauce served separately. Nothing here is difficult, but four components have to land warm at the same time.
Preparing the sweetbreadsSoak 2-3 hours in several changes of cold water until they lose their pink, then blanch 5 minutes in simmering salted water, plunge into ice water, and peel away membrane and gristle. Press between two plates under a weight for an hour so they slice cleanly; this step is what gives the firm, even rounds the arrangement depends on. Braise gently in stock, 25-35 minutes for a heart sweetbread.
SourcingAsk a butcher for veal sweetbreads and specify heart (pancreas) rather than throat (thymus): heart sweetbreads are rounder, plumper and hold their shape in a circle on the platter. Expect to order ahead. Reckon one large sweetbread per two people as a course.
"Bead-shaped quarter inch quenelles"Veal or chicken forcemeat piped from a plain tip into pea-sized beads, about 6 mm, and poached in barely trembling salted water or stock for 2-3 minutes. Water at a rolling boil will break them; the surface should shiver, not bubble.
Half-glazeNo. 413 is Ranhofer's half-glaze, brown sauce reduced with stock until it coats, i.e. what is now called demi-glace. A good homemade or commercial demi-glace is a reasonable stand-in. It should be thick enough to nap and gloss the sweetbreads rather than pool around them.
"So as to glaze"Here the coating of reduced sauce is itself meant to give the shine; elsewhere in the book glazing often involved passing a dish briefly under a salamander. A broiler on high for under a minute will do the same; longer and the sauce breaks or scorches.
The Madeira sauceNo. 492 is the book's Madeira sauce, in effect the half-glaze with Madeira. Add the wine late and do not boil it hard afterwards, or the aromatics you paid for go up in steam. Serve it hot in a warmed boat.
ServingThe original gives no yield. Two large sweetbreads sliced and ringed on a hot platter, with roughly a cup of quenelles in the centre, serves four as a first course. Everything must be genuinely hot; sweetbreads turn pasty as they cool.

A Little History

The Epicurean (1894) is Charles Ranhofer's record of thirty-odd years as chef at Delmonico's in New York, and its structure explains the terseness here: with several thousand numbered entries cross-referencing one another, a dish could be defined by two changes to an existing preparation. Sweetbreads were a genuine luxury on nineteenth-century American menus, scarce because each calf yields so little and perishable enough to demand a good butcher, which is why Ranhofer gives them dozens of separate numbers. The quenelle, a poached forcemeat dumpling, was by Ranhofer's day standard garnish work, piped in graduated sizes from the "bead" called for here up to full oval quenelles for a garnished platter. The name a la Conti, referenced for the base preparation, is one of many aristocratic house-names that attached themselves to classical garnishes; such attributions are traditional rather than documented, and by the 1890s they functioned simply as shorthand for a fixed set of trimmings.