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Sweetbreads En Estouffade
Cut from a small piece of larding pork twenty-four julienne-shaped strips, and with the aid of a small larding needle lard the tops of six medium, fresh, heart sweetbreads, blanched. Lightly butter a cocotte dish (earthen pan) and lay in the breads, one beside another.
With a very small Parisian potato scoop dig out as many pieces as you can from two medium, peeled carrots, two peeled turnips and two peeled potatoes. Chop very finely one white onion. Tie in a bunch one branch parsley, one of chervil, half bean sound garlic, one bay leaf and one clove. Arrange all the vegetables around the breads and lay the bouquet in the centre. Season all around with a teaspoon salt and half teaspoon white pepper. Divide half ounce butter into very small bits and distribute it evenly over the breads and vegetables. Cover the cocottiere, set on the range and let gently cook for five minutes. Then set in the oven for thirty minutes. Bring the pan to the oven door, carefully drain all the fat from the bottom and pour in one gill white wine; re-cover the cocottiere, reset in the oven for ten minutes. Remove, take up the bouquet, sprinkle half teaspoon chopped chives over, cover and send to the table.
A closed-pot braise of veal sweetbreads with buttered root vegetables — straightforward once the sweetbreads are properly prepped, which is the part the recipe compresses into one word.
- "Blanched" is doing a lot of workSweetbreads need soaking in several changes of cold water (2-4 hours, or overnight refrigerated) until the water runs clear, then a gentle simmer of about 3-5 minutes, then a plunge into ice water, then peeling of the outer membrane and any gristle. Press them flat between two plates under a weight for an hour before larding; unpressed sweetbreads swell and lose shape in the pot.
- Heart sweetbreads"Heart" denotes the rounded, compact lobe, the prized part, as against the elongated and stringier "throat" lobe; older usage applies the two names to pancreas and thymus respectively, and butchers are not consistent. Order veal sweetbreads and specify heart lobes if you can. Six medium ones will run somewhere around 2 to 3 lb before trimming.
- Larding porkUse fresh unsmoked pork fatback, cut into strips about 1/8 inch square and 2 inches long, chilled firm so the needle carries them. Unsmoked salt pork rinsed of surface salt works; bacon changes the flavour entirely. If you have no larding needle, lay the strips across the tops and let them baste as they render.
- The cocotteA small heavy lidded casserole or Dutch oven, glazed earthenware or enamelled iron, just wide enough to hold the sweetbreads in one layer. Snug is the point — the vegetables and butter should crowd them, not swim.
- Oven heatNo temperature is given. A covered braise of this kind wants a moderate oven, 325-350F, for the 30 minutes and again for the final 10. The sweetbreads should reach 160F internally and feel firm and springy.
- Units and toolsA gill in an American book of this period is 1/2 cup (4 fl oz); an imperial gill is 5 fl oz. A "very small Parisian potato scoop" is the smallest melon baller, roughly 1/4 to 1/2 inch; the trimmings are worth keeping for stock. "Half bean sound garlic" most likely means half a bean-sized piece of sound (unblemished) garlic.
- The bouquetParsley, chervil, garlic, bay and a single clove tied in a bundle so it can be lifted out whole. Fresh chervil is hard to find; a little tarragon plus extra parsley reads closest, though it is not the same herb.
- Draining the fatThis step matters. Butter plus rendered larding pork will pool, and pouring the wine into a fatty pan gives you a greasy, broken sauce instead of the light glaze intended. Tip the pot carefully at the oven door and spoon the fat off before the wine goes in.
- YieldSix sweetbreads serve six as a first course or three to four as a main. Serve straight from the covered pot, as directed — sweetbreads cool fast and stiffen.
Estouffade comes from the French étouffer, to smother or stifle: food cooked in a tightly closed vessel with very little liquid, so that it steams in its own butter and juices rather than boiling. The technique explains the odd-sounding sequence here — five minutes on the range to get the pot going, then a long covered spell in the oven, with the wine added only near the end so it barely reduces. Sweetbreads were a standing luxury on late nineteenth-century restaurant menus in Europe and America, delicate enough to need larding with pork fat to keep them from drying, and expensive enough to justify the fussy melon-balled carrots, turnips and potatoes arranged around them. Alexander Filippini, long associated with Delmonico's in New York, wrote for a readership that expected professional refinements of exactly this sort, which is why a domestic cookbook of the period assumes its reader owns a larding needle and knows what a cocottière is.