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Sweetbreads Saute with Fresh Mushrooms
Blanch and trim six heart sweetbreads, then cut them in quarter-inch-thick slices. Finely slice ten peeled and thoroughly cleaned medium, fresh mushrooms. Heat one and a half tablespoons melted butter in a frying pan, add the breads and mushrooms, season with a teaspoon salt, three saltspoons white pepper, a saltspoon grated nutmeg, and lightly brown ten minutes or until a nice golden colour, occasionally stirring meanwhile. Add two tablespoons flour, stir well while heating for half minute, pour in two tablespoons sherry and one gill cream, mix till it comes to a boil, then let boil ten minutes, lightly mixing meanwhile. Remove, pour into a deep, hot vegetable dish and serve.
A straightforward veal sweetbread sauté, but the recipe assumes you already know how to blanch offal and that measurements like the saltspoon are common knowledge. A few adjustments bring it into line with a modern pan and palate.
- Blanching is the hinge"Blanch and trim" carries most of the work: soak the sweetbreads in several changes of cold water for two to three hours to draw out blood, then simmer gently in salted, acidulated water for about 15 minutes, cool, and peel away the membrane and any gristle. Press them under a weighted plate until firm before slicing, or the quarter-inch slices will fall apart in the pan.
- "Heart sweetbreads"The trade divides veal sweetbreads into the round heart or kernel lobe and the longer throat lobe. The heart sweetbread is the prized cut; sizes vary a good deal, so six may run anywhere from about 2 to 4 lb. They are now generally sold simply as veal sweetbreads, often frozen and by special order.
- Saltspoon and gillA saltspoon is 1/4 teaspoon, so three saltspoons of white pepper is 3/4 teaspoon and a saltspoon of nutmeg is 1/4 teaspoon. A gill is 1/2 cup. The pepper is heavy-handed by current taste; a scant 1/4 teaspoon is enough to season without dominating cream and sherry.
- More butter than statedOne and a half tablespoons will not carry 2 lb of sweetbreads plus ten sliced mushrooms in a pan wide enough to brown them. Use 3 to 4 tablespoons, and brown the mushrooms first if you want colour on both — mushrooms release water that will steam the sweetbreads pale.
- Skip peeling the mushroomsPeeling was standard when mushrooms came in with grit and coarse skins. Cultivated white or cremini mushrooms need only a wipe; peeling costs flavour and time.
- The sauce will be very thickTwo tablespoons flour against only 1/2 cup cream gives something closer to a bound hash than a sauce, and ten minutes at a boil will tighten it further and risk scorching the flour. Loosen with veal or chicken stock and hold it at a bare simmer for four or five minutes, which is long enough to cook out the raw flour.
- YieldSix heart sweetbreads serve six as a first course or four generously over toast, rice or in pastry cases. The "deep, hot vegetable dish" is simply a warmed serving bowl.
Sweetbreads — the thymus and, less often, the pancreas of a calf or lamb — were a restaurant luxury in the early twentieth century, and this book's kitchen reads as a professional one: the tone, the sherry-and-cream finish and the direction to serve in a deep hot dish all suggest hotel and club cookery of the period, when a sauté of sweetbreads with fresh mushrooms sat comfortably in the middle of a long menu. The name has nothing to do with bread or sweetness; its origin is unsettled, though it is often said that "bread" may derive from an Old English word for a piece or morsel of flesh, with "sweet" distinguishing the mild-tasting gland from stronger offal. Their standing has since fallen sharply in English-speaking countries, partly through general retreat from organ meats and partly because BSE-era controls on bovine tissue made supply awkward; today they are more likely to be found in France, Spain and Argentina than in an American butcher's case, and usually need to be ordered ahead.