No. 2238

Casseroles of Lamb Sweetbreads a la de Luynes

Casseroles de Ris d'Agneau a la de Luynes

Braise twelve unlarded lamb sweetbreads as for la Montebello (No. 1560); when cooked place under a weight to reduce to half an inch thick, and when cold cut them up into squares, as well as a quarter as many cooked truffles into one-quarter of an inch squares. Put on to reduce some bechamel sauce (No. 409), stirring into it some truffle essence and a little good melted game glaze (No. 398); when the sauce is properly reduced, add to it the salpicon of sweetbreads and truffles. Fill some small porcelain or silver casseroles (flat saucepans) with this preparation, having them quite full and rounded on the top; smooth the surfaces dome-shaped with a knife, let get cold and then cover over with a thin layer of forcemeat, besprinkle with parmesan and bread-crumbs, pour a little melted butter over, then bake lightly in a slack oven.

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For the Modern Kitchen Do not make this as written.

A Delmonico's composed entrée that assumes a working brigade kitchen: three cross-references, two mother-sauce derivatives and a garnish that has to be made before you start. Read it as an assembly job — nearly all the work happens before the dish goes near the oven.

"Casseroles" means the vesselsRanhofer glosses it himself: small flat saucepans, in porcelain or silver. Modern equivalents are individual gratin dishes or shallow ramekins. The dish is not a casserole in the American sense.
Slack ovenA slack or cool oven is roughly 275–300°F. The point is only to set the forcemeat cap and colour the crumbs, not to reheat the filling through from cold, so keep it low and finish under a broiler if the top is still pale.
Lamb sweetbreadsThe glands (thymus, or in some cuts pancreas) of a young lamb, considerably smaller and more delicate than veal sweetbreads. Order them from a butcher; twelve lamb sweetbreads is a modest amount of meat, perhaps what one or two veal ones would give. Veal sweetbreads can stand in, but will need longer braising.
PressingAfter braising, the sweetbreads go under a weight between two trays until cold. This compacts them so they cut into clean squares rather than shredding — do it while they are still warm and leave them several hours, ideally overnight in the refrigerator.
SalpiconA salpicon is simply ingredients diced small and bound with a sauce. Here the truffles are cut in quarter-inch dice and the pressed sweetbreads into squares of unstated size, and the sauce should be reduced far enough that a spoonful holds its shape; a loose bechamel will slump and the dome will not stand.
Truffle essence and game glazeTruffle essence is the strained cooking or canning liquor from truffles; the juice from a jar of preserved truffles is the practical stand-in. Game glaze is game stock reduced to a syrup — a well-reduced brown chicken or duck stock does the same job. Both are seasoning, not bulk: a spoonful each.
The forcemeat lidThe cap is a thin layer of raw forcemeat (a veal, chicken or game quenelle mixture) spread over the chilled dome. It must go on cold filling or it will slide. Spread it thin — a thick layer will not cook through at 300°F.
YieldRanhofer gives none. Twelve lamb sweetbreads with the sauce will fill six to eight individual casseroles, served as one course in a long menu rather than as a main dish.

A Little History

The Epicurean (1894) is Charles Ranhofer's record of some thirty years as chef at Delmonico's in New York, and it is organised like a professional's reference rather than a home cookbook — hence the numbered cross-references that send you to No. 1560 for the braise and No. 409 for the bechamel. Dishes in it are routinely named for patrons, celebrities and European nobility; de Luynes is a French ducal house, and the attribution is the ordinary nineteenth-century restaurant habit of dressing a preparation in a borrowed title rather than any documented connection to the family. The dish itself belongs to a class of small hot entrees — sweetbreads, truffles, a bound sauce, a gratineed cap, served in the vessel it was cooked in — that filled the middle stretch of a long service menu, between the fish and the roast. Sweetbreads were then a standard luxury item of the American restaurant table.