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Sweetbreads Braise, Potter
Soak six heart sweetbreads in cold water for two hours, remove and plunge them in two quarts boiling water with teaspoon salt for five minutes, lift them up and neatly trim them, then place them in six individual egg-cocotte dishes. Pour over each a light tablespoon sherry and a tablespoon demi-glace, evenly season with a teaspoon salt and three saltspoons pepper, lay the cocottes in tin and set in oven for fifteen minutes, carefully turning once in a while, then bring them to the oven door. Place in a bowl half a very finely chopped onion, two chopped shallots, three thoroughly cleaned fresh mushrooms, also finely chopped, an ounce butter, briskly stir and spread the preparation over the six breads, reset in the oven for fifteen minutes longer, turning and basting them quite frequently during that time, remove, sprinkle a little chopped truffle over and send them to the table.
A straightforward braise once the sweetbreads are prepped; the original assumes you know both the butcher's vocabulary and how hot to set the oven. Neither is stated, so start here.
- What a "heart" sweetbread isOld butchery split the sweetbreads into the throat (thymus) and the heart or stomach sweetbread, which is actually the pancreas — rounder, denser, and considered the better piece. Order veal sweetbreads and ask for the round lobe; they are usually a special order and often frozen.
- Oven temperatureNone is given. A moderate oven, 350F, suits this: hot enough to reduce the sherry and demi-glace to a glaze over thirty minutes without scorching the ramekin.
- The step the recipe skipsAfter the five-minute blanch, drop them into ice water. Chilled sweetbreads firm up so the outer membrane and any fat or tubes pull away cleanly — that is what "neatly trim them" means, and it is far harder while they are warm.
- Egg-cocotte dishesSmall individual ovenproof pots, roughly 4 to 6 oz; modern ramekins or cocottes are the same thing. "Lay the cocottes in tin" means set them in a shallow baking pan for handling; no water is mentioned, so this does not appear to be a water bath.
- SaltspoonA quarter teaspoon. Three saltspoons is about three-quarters of a teaspoon of pepper, divided among six portions.
- The salt is dividedThe teaspoon of salt covers all six cocottes, not each; the blanching water takes its own teaspoon. Season lightly, since demi-glace is already reduced and salty.
- Demi-glaceA reduced brown sauce, classically espagnole reduced with brown stock, though it is often made simply as heavily reduced brown veal stock. Good jarred or frozen demi-glace works; a tablespoon per portion is all you need, so a small tub goes a long way. Thin, unreduced stock will not glaze.
- The raw duxellesOnion, shallot, mushroom and butter go on uncooked and finish in the oven. Chop them genuinely fine — coarse pieces will still be raw and watery at the end of fifteen minutes.
- Yield and servingSix portions, served in the cocottes they cooked in. As a first course this is ample; as a main it wants rice, buttered peas or toast to take up the glaze. Truffle is a garnish, not structural — leave it out rather than substitute truffle oil.
Sweetbreads occupied a high place in restaurant cooking: delicate, expensive, and a test of a kitchen's discipline, since they must be soaked, blanched, chilled and peeled before any real cooking begins. Serving them in individual egg cocottes with sherry and demi-glace suggests hotel-dining-room practice, when portioned service in the vessel it cooked in signalled care and let a waiter deliver a dish still bubbling. The name attached to the title follows a convention of the era's grand cookbooks, where dishes were tagged with the patron, chef or guest they were associated with. Organ meats like these have largely retreated from home cooking in English-speaking countries since the mid-twentieth century, which is why they now require a butcher's order rather than a trip to the counter.