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Sweetbreads, Everett
Clean and trim four fine heart sweetbreads, soak for one and a half hours in three changes of cold water, remove, drain well, plunge in boiling water with a teaspoon salt for three minutes, take up, drain and cut into six even pieces each. Heat in a saucepan two ounces good butter add sweetbreads with twelve peeled, well-cleaned, medium-sized, round fresh mushrooms, season with a level teaspoon salt, a little white pepper, gently toss, cover, then gently cook on range until a nice golden colour, tossing once in a while. Add a level tablespoon flour and two light teaspoons Oriental curry powder, toss well, then add a half gill sherry wine, a gill cream and three-quarters gill milk. Let briskly cook for ten minutes, add an ounce good butter, gently shuffle, dress on a hot dish and send to table with freshly prepared hot toast.
A rich curried sweetbread sauté that comes together quickly once the glands are soaked and blanched. The measurements are in gills, and the success of the dish rests on the soaking and peeling rather than on the sauce.
- What a heart sweetbread isThe "heart" sweetbread is the rounder, plumper gland, also called the stomach or belly sweetbread, as distinct from the long, tapered throat or neck sweetbread, the thymus. Butchers rarely distinguish them now, so order veal sweetbreads and expect a mix. Four of them is a generous portion for four people.
- Gills and ouncesA gill is half a cup, so a half gill of sherry is 4 tablespoons, a gill of cream is 1/2 cup and three-quarters gill of milk is 6 tablespoons. Two ounces of butter is 4 tablespoons, the final ounce another 2.
- The soaking is not optionalNinety minutes in three changes of cold water draws out blood and keeps the finished sweetbreads pale rather than grey and iron-tasting. Keep the water genuinely cold, in the refrigerator, since sweetbreads are highly perishable offal.
- Peel after blanchingThe three minutes in salted boiling water is there to firm the outer membrane so it can be pulled away. The recipe does not say to remove it, but do: left on, it shrinks in the pan and pulls the pieces out of shape and makes them chewy.
- "Cook on range until a nice golden colour"This is a covered sauté over moderate heat, not a hard sear. Ten to twelve minutes with occasional tossing will colour the sweetbreads and drive water out of the mushrooms; if the pan runs wet, uncover for the last few minutes so the flour has something to thicken.
- Peeled mushroomsPeriod recipes routinely call for mushrooms to be peeled. Modern white or cremini buttons need only trimming and a wipe; twelve medium caps is roughly 8 ounces, left whole.
- "Oriental curry powder"Probably a mild, turmeric-forward ready-mixed blend rather than a hot one. Any standard mild curry powder works; toss it with the flour in the hot butter for a minute before the liquid goes in, or the raw spice will taste dusty.
- The ten minutes of brisk cookingThat is the sauce reducing to a coating consistency. Watch it rather than the clock, and stir the last ounce of butter in off the heat so the cream does not break.
- ServingServe at once on hot plates over or beside dry toast; the sauce is loose and sweetbreads cool fast. This makes four servings as a lunch dish.
Sweetbreads were a prestige item in late nineteenth-century American hotel and restaurant cooking, expensive because each animal yields little and the gland spoils fast. The curry here reflects the period's fondness for a mild commercial curry powder as a sauce flavouring rather than any attempt at an Indian dish; the same yellow blend appears in the era's chicken, lobster and egg dishes, usually softened with cream and sherry. The proper name in the title follows this book's habit of attaching the name of a patron, a colleague or a hotel to a variation, and like many such names its exact reference is not recorded.