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Broiled Sweetbread
Soak sweetbread in cold water to cover for one hour. Cook in boiling water to which salt and one tablespoon of vinegar have been added for twenty minutes. Drain, plunge into cold water. Dry and separate meat from tubes and membrane. Split lengthwise. Sprinkle with salt and pepper and place on broiler. When sweetbread is heated brush both sides with melted butter. Continue to broil. 1 egg
A standard three-stage sweetbread preparation — soak, blanch, peel — compressed into a few lines. The instructions still work; what needs translating is the vocabulary and the missing times.
- The hinge: blanch, then chill hardThe plunge into cold water after boiling is not optional tidiness. It firms the gland so the membrane and tubes strip away cleanly, and it stops the cooking before the texture turns grainy.
- What a sweetbread isThe thymus (throat) or pancreas (heart) gland of a calf or lamb. Veal heart sweetbreads are the round, compact ones and the easiest to handle. Expect to order them; few supermarkets stock them, and they should be used within a day or two of purchase.
- SoakingAn hour in cold water is the minimum. Several changes of water, or a soak of two to three hours refrigerated, draws out more blood and gives a paler result. Keep it in the refrigerator, not on the counter.
- The vinegarAcidulated blanching water whitens the meat and firms it. Lemon juice does the same job in the same quantity.
- Twenty minutes is for a large veal sweetbreadLamb sweetbreads or small pieces need eight to twelve. They are done when firm to the touch, not soft and yielding.
- PressingMany period recipes direct weighting the peeled sweetbread between two plates in the refrigerator for an hour before splitting. The recipe omits it, but it makes the halves flat and even, which matters under a broiler.
- "Place on broiler"A broiler here is the rack under the flame, not the appliance door on a modern range only. Set it four inches from high heat and allow roughly three to four minutes a side, buttering as directed once the surface is warm; the interior is already cooked, so this stage is browning only.
- The stray "1 egg"Nothing in the method uses an egg. It is most likely a stray ingredient line belonging to a neighbouring recipe. Ignore it.
- YieldA veal sweetbread of about three-quarters of a pound would serve two as a light course, or one person on its own. The recipe itself states no yield.
Sweetbreads earned their place in the invalid cookery chapter because nineteenth- and early twentieth-century medical opinion held them to be among the most digestible of meats — bland, soft, low in connective tissue, and thought to make few demands on a weakened stomach. Broiling rather than frying was the invalid-cookery orthodoxy throughout the period: no browned flour, no heavy sauce, minimal fat. The origin of the name is obscure; one common suggestion traces it to the Old English bræd, meaning flesh, with "sweet" distinguishing it from muscle meat proper, but the derivation is not established. The Metropolitan Cook Book was produced by the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company and handed out free to policyholders, part of a broader campaign in which insurers pushed nutrition and home nursing advice on the theory that healthier customers made cheaper ones — which is why a chapter on feeding the sick sits alongside the cakes and roasts.