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Sweet Breads-Broiled
Mrs. Bates.
Parboil, rub them well with butter, and broil on a clean gridiron; turn them often, and now and then roll them over in a plate containing hot melted butter to prevent them from getting hard and dry.
A four-line contributed recipe that assumes you already know how to prepare a sweetbread. The broiling is easy; the preliminary work is where the dish is won or lost.
- Soak first, then blanchBefore parboiling, soak the sweetbreads in several changes of cold water for two to three hours, or overnight in the refrigerator, until the water stays clear. This draws out blood that would otherwise darken and toughen them.
- What "parboil" means hereSimmer gently in salted water with a splash of vinegar or lemon juice for about 12-15 minutes for veal, 5-8 for lamb, until firm to the touch, then plunge into ice water. Never let the pot boil hard, which bursts the delicate lobes.
- Peel and pressOnce cool, strip off the outer membrane and any tubes and fat with your fingers. Pressing the pieces between two plates under a weight for an hour helps them flatten and hold together on the grill; the recipe does not mention it, and it turns up in some period recipes rather than being universal.
- Buying them"Sweetbreads" normally means the thymus (throat) and pancreas (heart or belly) glands, usually of a calf; this recipe does not specify. Heart sweetbreads are the rounder ones and are generally preferred. Order ahead from a butcher; supermarkets rarely stock them. Lamb sweetbreads are smaller and cook faster.
- The gridironA gridiron sat over coals. Use a charcoal grill, a ridged cast-iron pan, or an oven broiler with the rack about 4 inches from the element. Reckon 3-4 minutes a side over a medium fire, until browned and hot through.
- The hinge: keep them bastedThe rolling in hot melted butter is the whole point of the method. Parboiled sweetbreads have almost no fat and dry to a mealy texture in a minute or two of dry heat, so keep a dish of melted butter beside the fire and return them to it repeatedly.
- Season and finishThe recipe gives none. Salt and pepper before broiling; period service would be with lemon, a mustard or tomato sauce, or on toast with bacon.
- YieldVeal sweetbreads vary considerably in size; a pair will generally serve two to three as a course. Cook them the day you buy them, or freeze after blanching.
The Home Cook Book (Chicago, 1870s) was compiled from recipes contributed by local women and sold to benefit charity, which is why so many entries carry a name like Mrs. Bates and so few carry full instructions: contributors wrote for cooks who already knew the basics. Sweetbreads were a genuine delicacy in nineteenth-century America, and were thought suitable for invalids and for company dinners alike because of their mildness and soft texture. The name is generally traced to a survival of an old sense of bread meaning flesh or morsel, with sweet distinguishing the gland's flavor from stronger offal; the etymology is traditional rather than settled. Broiling over coals with frequent basting was one common treatment alongside stewing, larding and breaded frying, and sweetbreads grew rarer in home kitchens much as organ meats generally did over the twentieth century.