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Sweetbreads, Root
Have six heart blanched sweetbreads ready. Cut a medium truffle into one-fifth-inch square strips the length of the truffle, then with the aid of a larding needle evenly insert the strips of truffles through the breads. Finely slice half a sound carrot, half an onion, one branch each celery and parsley, half ounce larding pork and one bay leaf, and place in a small frying pan with half ounce good butter; arrange the breads on top and season with a half teaspoon salt and three saltspoons white pepper. Set the pan on the fire for ten minutes, moisten with a half gill white, wine, two gills demi-glace and two tablespoons port wine; boil for five minutes, then set in the oven for thirty minutes, remove and keep hot.
Prepare a puree of chestnuts. Dress the puree on a crown-shaped, hot, large oval dish, then neatly arrange the sweetbreads in the centre and also keep warm. Finely mince six peeled and well-cleaned fresh mushrooms, place in a frying pan with a tablespoon melted butter and fry for six minutes, tossing them occasionally. Skim the fat from the gravy of the sweetbreads, then strain the sauce through a strainer into the mushroom pan, mix a little, boil for five minutes, then pour over the breads and serve.
A braised, truffle-larded sweetbread dish in the Delmonico's manner, built on three separate preparations that have to finish at the same time. Read it through before starting: the chestnut puree and the mushrooms both want to be ready when the breads come out of the oven.
- Which sweetbreadThe "heart" sweetbread is the rounded, compact lobe (also called the heart or kernel), firmer than the ragged throat piece; sources differ over whether it is the thoracic lobe of the thymus or the pancreas. Ask a butcher for veal heart sweetbreads and reckon on roughly 4-6 oz each; six of them serve six as a course.
- Blanched, and why it matters"Ready" means soaked in several changes of cold water until pale, blanched a few minutes in barely simmering salted water, refreshed, then peeled of the outer membrane and pressed flat between two plates under a light weight. Unpressed sweetbreads will not take the truffle strips cleanly and will slump in the braise.
- Larding with truffleA larding needle is a hollow or clipped steel needle that draws a strip through the meat. Without one, cut narrow slits with a thin knife and push the truffle batons in with the back of a skewer. Chill the truffle first so the strips stay rigid.
- Old measuresA gill is half a cup, so the wine is 1/4 cup and the demi-glace 1 cup. A saltspoon is about 1/4 teaspoon, making three saltspoons about 3/4 teaspoon of white pepper. "Half ounce larding pork" is a thin slice of fatback or unsmoked salt pork.
- Demi-glaceThe recipe assumes a house stockpot. Two gills of real demi-glace can be approximated with a cup of well-reduced veal stock thickened lightly, or with a good commercial demi-glace concentrate diluted rather less than the packet suggests, since it has to carry the sauce alone.
- Oven heatNo temperature is given. A moderate oven, 350F, for the thirty minutes; the pan should stay at a lazy simmer, not a boil, or the sweetbreads tighten and the sauce reduces to salt.
- The mushroomsSix minutes in butter is for a fine mince over fairly high heat, to drive off water and colour them slightly. Do not crowd the pan or they will stew grey, and the finished sauce will taste washed out.
- Finishing the sauceSkim the fat properly and strain out the vegetables and bay before the sauce meets the mushrooms; the aromatics have given everything they have and will turn muddy if left in. Five minutes' boil afterwards is to bring it to coating consistency.
- The chestnut crownCooked chestnuts pushed through a sieve with butter and a little of the braising liquid or cream, seasoned, and piped or spooned into a ring. It must be stiff enough to hold its shape and hot when it goes on the platter, so make it last and keep it covered.
Alexander Filippini spent decades in the kitchens of Delmonico's in New York, and the naming convention here is pure grand-restaurant practice: a garnish and sauce combination fixed by title, in this case attached to the surname Root. Dishes of that period were routinely named for patrons, colleagues or public figures, though the particular person behind this title is now untraceable. What the recipe does document precisely is the equipment and stock a professional kitchen took for granted around 1900 - a standing pot of demi-glace, truffles bought whole, a larding needle in the drawer - and a fondness for setting meat inside a piped ring of puree, a presentation the French called a bordure.