No. 2943

Scrambled Eggs with Sweetbreads

Œufs Brouilles aux Ris de Veau

Braise some sweetbreads and then put them under a weight to cool; cut them up in quarter-inch squares and warm in butter. Prepare some scrambled eggs the same as with gravy (No. 2940) and when nearly done add the sweetbreads and mix them in with the eggs. Dress on the center of a dish, pour around a little half-glaze sauce (No. 413) and surround with half-heart croutons (small) of bread fried in butter (No. 51). The sweetbreads may be replaced either by unsmoked salted tongue, ham, or even thin pieces of smoked beef or squares of bacon fried in butter.

← No. 2942 Scrambled Eggs with Mushrooms Eggs & Omelets No. 2944 Scrambled Eggs with Swiss and Parmesan Chees →

For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer assumes you have braised sweetbreads and a pot of half-glaze already on hand, which is how a hotel kitchen worked and how a home kitchen does not. Everything here hinges on the eggs: they must be cooked slowly and pulled while still loose, because the sweetbreads go in at the end and will carry their own heat.

Sweetbreads from scratchVeal sweetbreads (usually the thymus; the term also covers the pancreas) need soaking in several changes of cold water for a few hours to draw the blood, then a brief blanch, then peeling of the outer membrane before braising. Ranhofer takes all of this as read here and handles it elsewhere in the book; budget an afternoon or buy them already cleaned from a butcher.
Pressing under a weightCooling the braised sweetbread flat under a plate and a can compacts it so it can be cut into clean quarter-inch dice instead of crumbling. Chill it thoroughly first, then cut.
"Scrambled eggs the same as with gravy"No. 2940 is the plain scrambled-egg-with-gravy recipe; the gravy or meat stock enriches the eggs and loosens the curd. A tablespoon of good stock per three eggs gets you there; beat lightly, cook over low heat, stir constantly, and stop while they still look underdone.
Half-glazeNo. 413 is demi-glace: espagnole reduced with brown stock (and often a little meat glaze) until it coats a spoon. A bought veal or beef demi-glace concentrate, loosened and reduced, is the practical substitute. You need only a few spoonfuls poured around the eggs, not over them.
Half-heart croutonsSlices of crustless bread cut into small heart shapes and halved, fried in butter until pale gold. Fry them in advance and keep them warm and dry; they are set around the rim at the last moment so they stay crisp.
The substitutions are not equalTongue and ham need only warming through in butter, while the bacon is fried in butter as the recipe directs. All four are salted to some degree, and the smoked beef and bacon most of all, so hold back any salt in the eggs until you have tasted.
YieldNo quantity is given. Figure six to eight eggs and about six ounces of diced sweetbread for four as a first course.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer ran the kitchen at Delmonico's in New York, and The Epicurean (1894) is essentially that restaurant's working repertoire written out at scale, which explains the cross-references: sweetbreads were braised in quantity for other dishes, half-glaze sat on the stove all day, and croutons were cut by the dozen, so a dish like this was assembled from parts rather than built from nothing. Sweetbreads were prized in nineteenth-century French cooking for their mildness and delicate texture, and they turn up constantly in Ranhofer's egg and entree chapters as a way of dressing up something plain. The long list of alternatives at the end -- tongue, ham, smoked beef, bacon -- is the honest tell that this is a template, one of dozens of scrambled-egg variations numbered in sequence, each differing only in what gets folded in at the last moment.