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Sweetbreads, Monroe
Soak six fine, even-sized heart sweetbreads in cold water for two hours, remove, plunge in boiling water for five minutes, drain and neatly trim all around. Finely slice a small carrot and onion, a branch celery, two ounces larding pork, and place in a sautoire just large enough to hold them, with breads on top. Season with light teaspoon salt and half teaspoon pepper, baste with a little melted butter, place on fire and brown for five minutes. Pour in a half gill white wine and one and a half gills broth. Cover breads with a buttered paper, and as soon as they come to a boil set in oven for forty-five minutes, frequently basting meanwhile. Remove, lift up breads, place on a hot dish and keep hot. Skim fat from surface of gravy, then strain it through cheese-cloth into a small saucepan; add a pint drained, freshly soaked, fresh peas or canned green peas, mix well and cook for ten minutes. Knead on a plate a half ounce butter with a tablespoon flour, add it little by little to peas, carefully mixing while adding. Evenly divide peas in six individual cocotte dishes and arrange breads on top. Evenly distribute Bearnaise sauce over breads, arrange a thin slice truffle over each and serve.
A Gilded Age restaurant preparation: sweetbreads braised on a bed of aromatics, finished on peas with Béarnaise and truffle. Nothing here is difficult, but the vocabulary and the measures need translating.
- Heart sweetbreadsThe "heart" sweetbread is the rounder, denser pancreatic gland, as distinct from the elongated throat (thymus) sweetbread. Veal is almost certainly what is meant, though the recipe does not say so. Six even-sized ones will come to somewhere in the region of 2 to 3 lb depending on size; order them ahead from a butcher and use them within a day.
- Soak, blanch, pressThe two-hour cold soak draws blood and the five-minute blanch firms the gland so the outer membrane can be pulled and trimmed. A step this recipe omits is pressing the blanched sweetbreads flat under a weighted plate for an hour, which gives even thickness and a better sear.
- GillsA gill is half a cup. Half a gill of white wine is 1/4 cup; a gill and a half of broth is 3/4 cup. Together that is barely enough to come partway up the sweetbreads, which is correct for a braise of this kind.
- Sautoire and larding porkA sautoire is a straight-sided sauté pan, and "just large enough" matters here — a wide pan lets the small amount of liquid boil away. Larding pork is unsmoked fatback or salt pork; if using salt pork, blanch it and cut the added salt back.
- Buttered paperThis is a cartouche: a round of parchment, buttered side down, laid directly on the food. It keeps the exposed tops from drying while allowing some reduction, and it is not the same as a tight lid.
- Oven temperatureNo heat is given. A braise of this type belongs at 325-350F; forty-five minutes with frequent basting will leave the sweetbreads cooked through and glazed.
- The peas"Freshly soaked" points to dried peas, but the pint measure and the ten-minute cook only make sense for shelled fresh peas. Fresh peas will take those ten minutes; canned peas are already cooked and need only a couple of minutes to heat, or they collapse.
- Beurre maniéThe kneaded butter and flour is a beurre manié, worked in off a hard boil and a pinch at a time so it disperses. It should thicken the pea liquid to a light coating consistency, not a paste.
- Béarnaise and serviceBearnaise and service -- The Bearnaise is not given here and must be made separately; hold it warm, not hot, or it will break. Cocottes are small individual ovenproof dishes; the truffle slice is decorative and can be omitted without harming the dish. Serves six.
Sweetbreads were a luxury of the American restaurant kitchen around 1900 in a way they no longer are: expensive, delicate, endlessly garnished, and a reliable way for a chef to show technique on a small piece of meat. Dishes of this sort were routinely named for patrons, colleagues or public figures, and the name was attached to the garnish rather than the method -- here, peas bound with beurre manie, Bearnaise and truffle. Who Monroe was is not recorded in the book, and such names are generally best read as house shorthand rather than tribute. The construction itself is thoroughly classical French: a braise on a bed of aromatics and pork fat, the cooking liquid degreased, strained and turned into the sauce base, and the whole thing plated in individual cocottes so each diner receives the dish intact.