No. 2313

Sweetbread Patty a la Mcallister—Large, Hot

Gros Pate Chaud de Ris de Veau a la McAllister

First blanch the sweetbreads, then set them under a weight, and when cold escalop and fry them in butter with raw ham cut in dice-shaped pieces and peeled truffles; moisten with Madeira wine and let it fall to a glaze. Line a plain hinged pie mold (Fig. 153) with foundation paste (No. 135); fill the bottom and sides with a layer of chicken quenelle forcemeat (No. 89), mixed with half as much foies-gras forcemeat (No. 78) and chopped truffles; finish filling the mold with the sweetbreads, lay a bed of forcemeat on top, rounding it slightly; moisten the edges of the paste and cover with a flat of paste, cut flush with the mold and pinched all around; decorate the top with lozenges made of puff paste fragments (No. 146); egg over twice, and cook in a moderate oven for two hours and a quarter. When done, unmold and fill the pie with Madeira sauce (No. 492).

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For the Modern Kitchen

A raised hot pie built in a hinged mold, in the full Delmonico's manner: it depends on four other numbered recipes in the book, so read it as an assembly instruction rather than a standalone formula. The single thing that decides success is the forcemeat lining — it must be thick enough and pressed tight enough to seal the pastry from the wine-glazed filling, or the crust turns to paste from within.

SweetbreadsVeal sweetbreads (thymus and pancreas) must be ordered from a butcher. Soak them several hours in cold, frequently changed water, peel away the outer membrane and any gristle, then blanch briefly and press between two plates under a weight until cold — that step is what makes them firm enough to slice.
"Escalop"Here it means to cut into thin, broad slices, not to bake in a shallow dish. Slice the pressed sweetbreads about a quarter-inch thick.
"Fall to a glaze"Reduce the Madeira until it barely coats the pan and the sweetbreads, syrupy and almost dry. Any loose liquid left in the filling will soak the bottom crust during two hours in the oven.
Raw hamUncooked cured ham — prosciutto, speck or a comparable dry-cured ham cut into small dice. It will finish cooking in the pie.
Foundation pasteRanhofer's No. 135 is a lining paste, stiff enough to hold a shape upright in the mold. It is structural rather than tender.
The moldA hinged pie mold has sides that unclip from the base. A springform pan or a loose-bottomed cake ring, well buttered, stands in for it; the recipe gives no size. The pie is unmolded before serving, so the sides must be able to release cleanly.
Oven and timeThe book gives no temperatures; 'moderate' is usually read today as somewhere around 325-350F. Two and a quarter hours is plausible for a mold this size and this densely packed, but check the center with a thermometer: the forcemeat should reach 165F. If the crust colors too fast, tent it with foil.
Egg over twiceTwo coats of egg wash, the second applied after the first has dried, for a deep gloss. Cut a vent hole in the top before baking.
Finishing with sauceThe Madeira sauce goes in hot, through the vent, immediately before serving — it fills the gap left as the filling shrinks. Have it thin enough to run and taste it for salt after the ham and truffle have had their say.
YieldThe recipe gives neither a mold size nor a yield; a large pie of this kind would serve roughly eight to ten as a formal entree course, cut in wedges at table.

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 dedications double as a guest list. The McAllister of this title is generally taken to be Ward McAllister, the social arbiter who managed Mrs. Astor's ballroom lists and gave the language "the Four Hundred" — a man who ate at Delmonico's often enough to have dishes named for him and who wrote at length on how such dinners ought to be ordered. Naming an entree after a patron was standard practice in the grand restaurant kitchens of the period, and it explains the shape of the book: hundreds of variations on a handful of luxury templates, distinguished less by technique than by which combination of sweetbread, truffle and foie gras a particular customer preferred. The large hot pie itself belongs to an older French tradition of the pâté chaud, baked in a hinged mold, unmolded whole for display, and sauced at the table.</invoke>