No. 320

Lamb or Veal Sweetbread Soup, German Style

Potage de ris d'Agneau ou de Veau a l'Allemande

Blanch some lamb or veal sweetbreads, by placing them in a saucepan with sufficient water to cover them; let the liquid boil, then remove from the hot fire, until they are firm to the touch; set them under a weight to reduce them to one half of an inch thick, when cold cut them up in squares, two pounds in all. Put four ounces of butter into a saucepan, and when very hot, lay in the sweetbreads and fry them slowly without coloring, moisten with three pints of broth, and three pints of veloute (No. 415), let come to a boil while stirring continually, and then cook slowly until the sweetbreads are thoroughly done; thicken the soup just when about serving, with two egg-yolks, one gill of cream, and two ounces of fine butter; these proportions being for one quart of soup. For garnishing fry in butter all the fragments, drain off the butter, set them aside to cool, and chop them up very fine, with as much cooked mushrooms, and mix with this half its quantity of veal quenelle forcemeat (No. 92) and chopped parsley; season with salt, pepper, and nutmeg, then divide this preparation into equal parts, so as to make small balls five-eights of an inch in diameter, lay them on a tin sheet, and poach them in a slow oven. Have some noodles (No. 142) cooked in salted water; pour the soup into a soup-tureen, and add to it the quenelles, the sweetbreads, the noodles and some finely chopped parsley.

← No. 319 Knuckle of Veal a la Briand Soups & Broths No. 321 Lobster and Crawfish Soup, Duke Alexis →

For the Modern Kitchen

A classic composed soup from Ranhofer's The Epicurean, built on cross-references to other numbered recipes in the book. The work is in the prep: sweetbreads, a velouté, forcemeat quenelles and noodles all made separately, then assembled at the tureen.

The hinge: never boil after the liaisonThe egg yolks, cream and butter go in at the very last moment, just before serving; Ranhofer does not specify off the heat, but the soup must not be allowed to boil afterwards or the yolks will curdle and the soup break. Temper them with a ladle of hot soup first and stir back in over the gentlest heat.
Scale the liaisonRanhofer states the thickening proportions "for one quart of soup," but the soup itself is six pints. Multiply by three: about six yolks, three gills of cream, six ounces of butter for the full batch.
A gillHalf a cup, four fluid ounces. One gill of cream per quart of soup.
Blanching and pressingModern practice is to soak sweetbreads in several changes of cold water for a few hours first to draw out blood, then blanch, cool, and peel off the outer membrane before pressing. Press between two trays with a weight in the refrigerator, not at room temperature.
SourcingTwo pounds of sweetbreads is a special order from a butcher. Veal thymus is the standard article; lamb sweetbreads are smaller and cook faster. Buy them very fresh or frozen, and use within a day.
"Fry them slowly without coloring"Sweat in the butter over low heat so the pieces firm and absorb fat without browning. Colour here would muddy a soup meant to stay pale.
Velouté (No. 415)A white roux moistened with veal or chicken stock, simmered and skimmed until clean-tasting. Three pints of it plus three pints of broth is the body of the soup; a good unsalted stock reduced and lightly thickened will stand in.
The quenellesNo. 92 is Ranhofer's veal quenelle forcemeat, a pounded forcemeat of the usual type. Poaching the little balls "in a slow oven" means a low oven -- a slow oven was generally reckoned somewhere in the 250-325F range -- in a shallow pan; they need only firm through, a few minutes for pieces five-eighths of an inch across.
YieldSix pints of soup plus garnish serves twelve to sixteen as a first course. Cook the noodles separately and add at the last moment so they do not go soft in the tureen.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer ran the kitchens at Delmonico's in New York for over thirty years, and The Epicurean (1894) is the record of that operation: nearly 3,500 numbered recipes cross-referencing one another the way a professional brigade actually worked, with the stocks, veloutés and forcemeats kept as standing preparations that a dozen finished dishes could draw on. The label à l'Allemande in nineteenth-century French kitchen usage generally signals a white sauce or soup finished with an egg-yolk-and-cream liaison rather than anything specifically German in origin, though the noodle garnish here nods at the name. Sweetbreads were prized restaurant goods in this period, delicate, expensive and troublesome enough to handle that their appearance on a menu was itself a statement; the instruction to save the trimmings, fry them and work them into the quenelle forcemeat shows the other side of a grand kitchen, where nothing costing that much was thrown away.