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Sweetbreads Braise, Cheron
Blanche six sweetbreads and proceed to prepare them. Prepare also a Bearnaise sauce. Dress the breads on a hot dish, then spread a tablespoon Bearnaise sauce over each bread. Arrange six canned artichokes filled on top with a tablespoon hot macedoine and serve.
This is a Delmonico-style assembly note rather than a full recipe: it assumes you already know how to blanch, press and braise sweetbreads and how to make a Bearnaise. Here is what the shorthand is hiding.
- "Proceed to prepare them"The elided steps are: soak the sweetbreads in several changes of cold water for a few hours to draw out blood, blanch them in barely simmering salted water, refresh in ice water, then peel off the outer membrane and gristle and press between two plates under a weight until cold and firm. Only then are they braised, which is what "Braise" in the title refers to.
- The braise itselfA classic braise for sweetbreads means a bed of diced carrot, onion and celery, the pressed breads laid on top, stock to come halfway up, and a buttered paper over them, basting so the tops glaze. The book specifies neither temperature nor time; a moderate oven, around 325F for roughly 25 to 35 minutes, gives the intended result. They should be firm and opaque throughout, not pink.
- Buy veal, not beefSweetbreads are the thymus and pancreas glands of a young animal. Heart sweetbreads (the plump, round pancreatic ones) are milder and hold their shape far better than the ragged throat sweetbreads, and are the likelier intention here. Order them ahead from a butcher.
- MacedoineA macedoine is simply a mixture of vegetables cut in small even dice, typically carrot, turnip, green beans and peas, each cooked separately to the right doneness and then bound with a little butter. It should be hot and barely moist, not saucy, or it will slide off the artichoke.
- Canned artichokesThe recipe wants artichoke bottoms, the flat cup-shaped base, not the quartered hearts sold in oil today. Canned or frozen bottoms are still available; rinse well, then warm them in a little butter and stock so they are not tinny.
- Bearnaise timingMake the Bearnaise last and hold it warm, around 130 to 140F, in a warm bowl or a switched-off oven with the door ajar. Much hotter and it can split; much cooler and it stiffens.
- YieldSix sweetbreads and six artichoke bottoms give six servings, one of each per plate. Plan on 5 to 6 oz of raw sweetbread per person.
The word Cheron here is a garnish name, not a place: in the classical repertoire a dish "Cheron" is finished with artichoke bottoms filled with a buttered macedoine of vegetables, usually alongside Bearnaise. The formula sits comfortably in this book, where French garnish names functioned as a compressed code between kitchen and menu card: a cook who knew what Cheron meant needed only three lines of instruction, which is exactly what he was given. Sweetbreads were prestige eating in that era, expensive per pound and demanding of labour, and their fall from American menus may have less to do with taste than with the disappearance of the long, patient offal preparations that a brigade kitchen could absorb and a home cook generally cannot.