No. 857

Canapes of Sweetbreads

Canapes de ris de Veau

Cut into three-sixteenths of an inch squares one-half pound of braised sweetbreads, a quarter of a pound of cooked mushrooms and two ounces of lean cooked ham; fry all with four ounces of butter, adding a bunch of parsley garnished with thyme and bay leaf; moisten with a little broth (No. 189) thickened with espagnole sauce (No. 414); skim off the fat and reduce the sauce till nearly dry, then stir in three egg-yolks and a piece of fresh butter. Prepare some slices of bread three-sixteenths of an inch thick and one and a half inches by two and three-quarters; toast them, cover with the preparation the same thickness as the bread, smooth the surfaces and dip them in beaten eggs, then roll them in bread-crumbs, and fry them in very hot fat; serve on a folded napkin.

← No. 856 Canapes Martha Hot Side Dishes No. 858 Cannelons Oe Beef Palate or Lambs' Sweetbrea →

For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer assumes you already have braised sweetbreads, a pot of espagnole and a stock on hand; without them this is a two-day dish. The finished mixture is essentially a stiff salpicon, and everything depends on getting it cold and firm before it is breaded.

The hinge: chill before breadingThe spread must be refrigerated on the toast until firm, ideally an hour or more, before it goes into egg and crumbs. Applied warm, the yolk-bound mixture slumps off the bread and unravels in the fat.
Egg yolks off the heatStir the three yolks and the butter into the reduced mixture away from the burner, then return it to low heat only long enough to thicken. Boiling after the yolks go in gives you scrambled egg in brown sauce.
SweetbreadsVeal sweetbreads (thymus or pancreas) are a special order from a butcher. They need several hours of soaking in cold water with changes, a brief blanch, peeling of the outer membrane and pressing under a weight before the braise Ranhofer takes for granted.
Espagnole and brothNo. 414 is the classic flour-thickened brown sauce built on veal stock, a day's work in itself. A good commercial demi-glace, or brown veal stock reduced and lightly thickened, stands in without loss here since the sauce is cooked down almost dry.
"Three-sixteenths of an inch"About 5 mm, halfway between 1/8 and 1/4 inch, both for the dice and for the bread. The dice should read as distinct pieces, not paste, so cut by hand rather than pulsing in a processor.
The bouquet"A bunch of parsley garnished with thyme and bay leaf" is a tied bouquet garni. Ranhofer adds it to the mixture as it fries in butter, before the moistening; lift it out before the reduction finishes.
BreadFirm day-old white sandwich bread, crusts off, cut to about 1 1/2 by 2 3/4 inches. Toast it dry rather than dark; it is a structural base and will be fried again.
FryingRanhofer says only "very hot fat" and gives no temperature; in modern terms that is around 375F. Lower and the crumb coat soaks; much higher and the outside colors before the filling warms through. Fry a minute or so a side, drain, salt lightly.
YieldRanhofer gives no yield. They must go to the table straight from the pan.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer, chef of Delmonico's in New York, published The Epicurean in 1894 as a complete record of the restaurant's repertoire, and its "Hot Side Dishes" chapter is where the small, labor-heavy items sat in the service order: entremets and hors d'oeuvre that filled out a long menu. Canape here keeps its older kitchen sense of a shaped piece of bread carrying a savory topping, closer to a croute than to the cold cocktail canape of the 1920s, and the filling is a textbook salpicon, finely diced meats bound with reduced sauce. Sweetbreads were prized dining-room fare in the period and appear dozens of times in the book; a dish like this may well have used the trimmings from grander sweetbread preparations, alongside ham and mushrooms of the sort a professional larder would commonly have kept. The espagnole and the numbered cross-references are the tell that this was written for a brigade kitchen where the foundation sauces were standing all day.