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Sweetbreads En Fricandeau
Soak six heart sweetbreads in cold water for two hours, remove, plunge in two quarts boiling water with a teaspoon salt, boil for five minutes, drain and neatly trim them. Cut from a piece of larding pork twenty-four thin strips one inch long, and with aid of a small larding needle insert strips one inch long, and with aid of a small larding needle insert strips on surface of the six breads. Place all trimmings of lard in a small sautoire, with a sliced each carrot and onion, branch parsley, bay leaf, clove, ounce raw ham cut in pieces, and lay breads over. Season with a level teaspoon salt, three saltspoons pepper, lightly baste with melted butter and set on the fire for five minutes. Moisten with half gill white wine, let reduce to a glaze, pour in one and a half gills broth and cover breads with a buttered paper. When thoroughly boiling set sautoire in oven for thirty-five minutes, remove, lift up breads with a fork, dress on a hot dish and keep hot. Skim fat off surface of gravy, strain through cheesecloth into another saucepan and briskly boil on open fire for six minutes. Add a gill demi-glace, one tablespoon capers, boil for five minutes more, pour sauce and sprinkle a little chopped parsley over breads and serve.
A classic braised-and-larded preparation from a day-by-day menu book, written for cooks who already knew what a sautoire and a demi-glace were. The measurements are Victorian-American and the oven temperature is left entirely to your judgment.
- The hinge: peel and pressThe recipe's five-minute blanch is there to firm the sweetbreads so the outer membrane can be pulled away and the trimming done cleanly. Modern practice adds one step the text omits: after blanching and cooling, press the sweetbreads between two plates under a light weight for an hour so they cook evenly and hold their shape under the larding needle.
- "Heart sweetbreads"The rounded lower lobe of the thymus, as opposed to the elongated "throat" sweetbread. It is the prized cut and is what to ask a butcher for; six of them will need ordering ahead. Lamb sweetbreads are sometimes used instead.
- Gills and saltspoonsA US gill is 4 fl oz, so half a gill of wine is 1/4 cup, one and a half gills of broth is 3/4 cup, and a gill of demi-glace is 1/2 cup. A saltspoon is usually reckoned at 1/4 teaspoon, making "three saltspoons pepper" about 3/4 teaspoon.
- Sautoire and buttered paperA sautoire is a straight-sided sauté pan with a lid, oven-safe; any heavy braiser works. The buttered paper is a cartouche laid directly on the surface, and it matters here because the liquid is shallow and the exposed tops would otherwise dry and colour.
- Oven temperatureNone is given. A braise of this kind wants a moderate oven, 325-350F, held at a bare simmer for the thirty-five minutes stated. Higher and the small amount of broth will boil away before the time is up.
- Larding porkFresh unsmoked fatback, cut into lardons and chilled hard before threading; salt pork blanched to draw the salt is the usual stand-in. If a larding needle is not to hand, the sweetbreads can be barded with thin sheets of fatback tied on, though the effect is not the same.
- Demi-glaceA staple of the professional kitchen brigade the book was written for. A good reduced veal stock, or a commercial demi-glace concentrate, gives the body the finished sauce depends on; ordinary broth will not thicken in five minutes of boiling.
- YieldSix sweetbreads serve six as a course, or three to four as a main dish.
Fricandeau properly means a thick slice of veal, larded all over the surface with strips of pork fat and braised in a little stock until the liquid glazes it. The name was extended to other larded, braised, glazed white meats, sweetbreads among them, in nineteenth-century cookery writing. The International Cook Book (1906) is by Alexander Filippini, who spent many years at Delmonico's in New York, and it is organised as a calendar: a breakfast, luncheon and dinner for every day of the year, with numbered recipes to support them. The Christmas menu printed here, with its terrapin, canvasback duck and orange oyster cocktails, gives some idea of what an ambitious American household or club was expected to aspire to in that decade, and of how much kitchen labour that aspiration assumed.