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Sweetbreads, Alice

Soak six heart sweetbreads in cold water for two hours. Lift them up and plunge into two quarts boiling water with a teaspoon salt to blanch for five minutes. Lift up, drain well on a cloth, then neatly trim all around. Cut twenty-four very thin strips larding pork, and with a very small larding needle carefully lard the top of each sweetbread with four strips of the lard. Lay the breads in a sautoire, one beside another. Season with a teaspoon salt, two saltspoons cayenne pepper and a saltspoon of grated nutmeg, adding three-quarters of a pint cold cream and one pint very fresh milk. Cover the pan and boil on the range for ten minutes, then add twelve good-sized peeled and well-cleaned fresh mushroom heads and boil for fifteen minutes longer. Knead well half ounce butter with a teaspoon flour in a bowl and carefully add, little by little, to the breads; mix well with a wooden spoon while cooking for one minute, without breaking the breads. Remove the pan to the table. Have six small individual mushroom glass bells. Cut six round pieces bread to the diameter of the bottom of the bells; lightly toast them. Place each toast in a shirred-egg dish, then place a sweetbread on top of each toast, nicely arrange two heads of mushrooms on top of each sweetbread, then cover them with the glass bells. Divide the sauce of the breads evenly in the six dishes around the bells. Place on the range, and as soon as they come to a boil place in a moderate oven to bake for ten minutes. Remove from the oven, place on six plates and serve with the bells, that is, do not remove the bells till they are on the table.