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Sweetbreads Braises, Bearnaise Sauce
Six blanched sweetbreads, half a medium, sliced carrot, half ditto sliced onion, half a sliced leek, half a branch chopped celery, half a branch parsley, one clove, one fine, ripe, chopped tomato, two allspices, half bay leaf, one saltspoon thyme, half ounce chopped lard.
Melt a teaspoon butter in a saucepan large enough to easily hold the breads, add the lard, as well as all the other articles, and braise on the fire for ten minutes, mixing well once in a while. Lay the sweetbreads on top and sprinkle over them a teaspoon salt. Pour in cold water up to half the height of the sweetbreads. Cover them with a piece of buttered paper. Then as soon as they come to a boil, place them in the hot oven for thirty minutes. Remove and dress on a hot dish. Strain the gravy over the breads and serve with the Bearnaise sauce in a bowl separately.
A classic French braise written in the shorthand of a professional kitchen: the aromatics are a mirepoix, the cooking liquid barely covers half the meat, and all of it goes to the oven under paper. The recipe assumes the sweetbreads have already been prepared, which is where most of the work actually lies.
- "Blanched" is doing a lot of workBefore any of this, the sweetbreads need soaking in several changes of cold water for a few hours to draw out blood, then a brief simmer, then a plunge into ice water, then peeling of the outer membrane and gristle. They are finally pressed flat between two plates under a weight in the refrigerator. Skip this and the finished dish is spongy and bloody-tasting.
- Which gland to buyVeal sweetbreads come in two forms: the round, compact heart or belly sweetbread (the pancreas) and the more irregular, elongated throat sweetbread (the thymus). The rounder ones braise more evenly and are worth asking a butcher for. The recipe does not say how many it serves, though six breads would suit six as a course.
- Lard means salt pork here"Half ounce chopped lard" in this idiom is most likely chopped fatback or salt pork rather than the rendered white fat sold in tubs today; the instruction to chop it points that way. Its job is to render into the vegetables and enrich the gravy. Chopped bacon or pancetta gets you close.
- Saltspoon and allspiceA saltspoon is a quarter teaspoon, so the thyme is a modest pinch. "Two allspices" means two whole berries, not ground spice — they are meant to be strained out with the rest.
- "Braise on the fire for ten minutes"This first stage is sweating, not browning. Keep the heat moderate so the carrot, onion, leek and celery soften and give up their moisture without colouring; scorched mirepoix makes a bitter gravy.
- The buttered paperThis is a cartouche — a round of parchment buttered on one side, laid directly on the meat. It holds in steam and stops the exposed tops of the sweetbreads from drying while the shallow liquid does the braising. Foil is not a substitute; the point is that steam escapes slowly.
- A hot ovenRead this as 400–425°F. Thirty minutes at that heat is right for pressed sweetbreads of ordinary size in shallow liquid; they should be firm and opaque throughout, not pink at the centre.
- Strain, then reduceThe strained cooking liquid will be thin and abundant relative to the meat. Boiling it down hard for a few minutes before pouring it over gives a gravy with some body. Press the vegetables in the sieve to extract the tomato and their juices.
- The béarnaiseThe bearnaise -- It is served separately, in a bowl, on purpose: the vinegar and tarragon cut the richness. Make it last, hold it barely warm, and never over direct heat, or the emulsion breaks.
Sweetbreads — the thymus and pancreas glands of a young calf — were a luxury item on American restaurant menus well into the twentieth century, and this recipe reads like a line cook's note from exactly that world. Alexander Filippini, whose international collection this comes from, worked at Delmonico's in New York, and the method here is orthodox French braisage: a bed of aromatic vegetables, minimal liquid, a paper lid, and an oven finish. The béarnaise served alongside is generally traced to the Pavillon Henri IV at Saint-Germain-en-Laye in the 1830s, and its name to the birthplace of Henri IV in Béarn, though the attribution is traditional rather than documented. The pairing of a delicate braised gland with a sharp tarragon-and-vinegar butter sauce is one of many the period allowed: sweetbreads have almost no assertive flavour of their own, and were also sent out with Madeira, cream, truffle, financière or pea garnishes.