Home › The World's Kitchen › Sweetbreads, Victor Emmanuel
Sweetbreads, Victor Emmanuel
Soak six large heart sweetbreads in cold water for two hours, drain, plunge in a quart boiling water with a teaspoon salt, boil for five minutes, drain on sieve, neatly trim all around and lard surface with a few strips of larding pork. Finely slice an ounce salt pork, a carrot, small onion, six fresh mushrooms, and place in a sautoire with a branch parsley and bay leaf. Lay breads on top, season with a teaspoon salt, lightly baste with butter and cook on fire for five minutes. Pour in one and a half gills white wine, let briskly reduce to almost a glaze, pour in one and a half gills broth, cover breasts with a sheet buttered paper, set in oven for twenty minutes, remove and keep hot.
Boil three ounces Italian rice in a pint broth with teaspoon salt for thirty-five minutes and drain on sieve. Place rice in a small saucepan with two truffles cut in small squares, two tablespoons pate de foie gras, four tablespoons sweetbreads gravy, an ounce grated Parmesan cheese and two egg yolks; season with two saltspoons salt, a saltspoon cayenne, and gently mix on fire while heating for five minutes. Arrange rice crown-like on a large hot dish and place sweetbreads in centre. Mix in small saucepan a tablespoon each good butter and flour. Skim fat off sweetbreads gravy, strain through cheesecloth into pan and add a gill cream and saltspoon cayenne. Mix well until it comes to a boil, let reduce for five minutes, add an egg yolk and sharply mix while heating for one minute. Pour sauce over sweetbreads in centre of rice, set in oven for ten minutes, remove and serve.
A Delmonico's-style braise: sweetbreads larded, cooked on a bed of aromatics, and set in a ring of enriched rice. The measurements are period, and two of the timings need adjusting.
- Gills and saltspoonsA gill is half a cup, so one and a half gills is 3/4 cup — that quantity applies to the wine and the broth; the cream is a single gill, 1/2 cup. A saltspoon is about 1/4 teaspoon, which makes the cayenne assertive but not extreme.
- SautoireA straight-sided sauté pan wide enough to hold the sweetbreads in one layer, with a lid or at least room for the buttered paper. Anything deep and narrow will steam rather than reduce.
- Heart sweetbreadsThe "heart" sweetbread is the rounded lobe, generally the pancreas, as against the elongated "throat" sweetbread, which is the thymus and stringier; butchers' usage varies. Six large ones is a generous quantity, enough for about six at table. Ask a butcher to order them in advance.
- Press after blanchingAfter the five-minute blanch and the trimming, set the sweetbreads between two plates with a light weight for an hour if you have time. It firms them so they slice cleanly and hold the larding strips.
- Oven heatNo temperature is given. A moderate oven, around 350F, suits both the twenty-minute braise under buttered paper and the final ten minutes with the sauce.
- The rice timingThirty-five minutes will destroy any Italian rice sold today. Arborio or carnaroli boiled in broth is done in 16 to 18 minutes and should still have a little bite, since it goes back over heat with the yolks and cheese.
- The hinge: the yolksBoth the rice binding and the finishing sauce are thickened with raw egg yolk stirred in off the boil. Keep both below a simmer — the sauce especially, which is added after the five-minute reduction and heated for one minute only. Let either boil and you get scrambled egg in cream.
- Larding pork, foie gras, trufflesLarding pork is fresh unsmoked back fat cut into strips and threaded through the surface with a larding needle; thin sheets of fatback tied over the top do much the same work. Pâté de foie gras here means a ready-made foie gras preparation, smooth enough to stir in for richness. Preserved black truffle in place of fresh is fine at this quantity.
Filippini cooked at Delmonico's, and this is Delmonico cooking exported into a book meant to survey "the world's kitchen": a French braise wearing an Italian name, with Piedmontese rice, Parmesan, truffles and foie gras. Naming a dish for a reigning monarch was standard restaurant practice in the period — Victor Emmanuel II had been the first king of a united Italy — so the label reads as a general nod to Italy rather than a record of anyone's dinner. Sweetbreads themselves were a luxury of the era's grand menus, prized for their delicacy and their willingness to absorb whatever expensive garnish the kitchen could afford; the rice crown with a sauced centre is the classic bordure presentation, designed to be carried whole to the table.