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Crisco (Peas or new Potatoes Rich)
Peas or new Potatoes Rich brown gravy Sweetbreads should always be blanched before using. To blanch, soak in cold water two hours, changing water 3 or 4 times. Put into saucepan, cover with cold water, add little salt, and skim well as water comes to boil. Simmer from ten to thirty minutes, according to kind of sweetbread used. Remove to basin of cold water until cold, or wash well in Meats cold water and press between two plates till cold. Dry, remove skin, cut in slices, coat with beaten egg and toss in breadcrumbs, and fry in hot Crisco to a golden brown. Serve round peas or new potatoes, with rich brown gravy.
For those whose digestions are at fault, sweetbreads ought to be eaten as a daily ration if the pocketbook will afford it. For this special part of the animal's anatomy is that one of all the viscera whose mission is to help digestion. It is of the very pancreas itself, that stomach gland of marvelously involved structure which elaborates the powerful pancreatic juice. It is alkaline in nature, able to digest starches, fats, and most of what escapes digestion in the stomach proper. It received its name from a fancied resemblance in its substance and formation to the rising lumps of dough destined for bread.
A straightforward crumbed-and-fried sweetbread, printed in a promotional cookbook to demonstrate Crisco as a frying medium. The soaking and blanching are the whole job; the frying takes minutes.
- Blanch first, and do not skip itThe two-hour cold soak with several water changes draws out blood, and the simmer firms the gland so the membrane will peel and the slices hold together. An unblanched sweetbread falls apart in the pan and browns unevenly.
- Which sweetbread you haveThe "ten to thirty minutes, according to kind" presumably distinguishes throat (thymus) from heart or stomach (pancreas) sweetbreads. A thymus at a bare simmer is generally done in roughly 10-15 minutes, the denser pancreas nearer 25-30. Both should be just firm, not tight.
- Press them coldThe recipe offers a choice: chill in a basin of cold water, or press between two plates until cold. Pressing, ideally under a light weight, is what tends to give you even slices to egg and crumb; chilling under a weight in the refrigerator is a convenient modern version.
- Crisco and frying temperatureCrisco here is simply the shallow-frying fat; any neutral oil or shortening does the same. The book says only "hot" -- around 350-375F is the usual modern range. Too cool and the crumb soaks; too hot and the coating colours before the interior heats through. Two to three minutes a side is enough since the meat is already cooked.
- Rich brown gravyA brown roux loosened with good beef or veal stock, reduced and strained, is the sort of thing meant. Don't build it from the blanching water, which the recipe has you skim precisely to get rid of blood and off-flavour.
- SourcingSweetbreads are now a special order at most butchers and often arrive frozen. Use them within a day of thawing; they are highly perishable and turn grey and sour quickly.
- YieldReckon one pair of veal sweetbreads, roughly 1 to 1 1/4 lb, for two to three people as a main course with peas or potatoes.
- The medical claimThe closing paragraph, that eating pancreas aids your own digestion, is period nutritional folklore. Digestive enzymes are proteins and are broken down like any other protein in the stomach. Eat sweetbreads because they are good, not as therapy.
The Story of Crisco belongs to a genre invented by manufacturers: the free or near-free cookbook whose real subject is a single product. Crisco, hydrogenated cottonseed oil, was introduced by Procter & Gamble in 1911, and the book's job was to persuade cooks that a new white shortening could stand in for lard and butter across the whole repertoire, including a genteel course like fried sweetbreads. The dish itself is older than the fat: crumbed and fried veal sweetbreads with peas were a fixture of nineteenth-century hotel and household cookery, when offal was ordinary rather than exotic. The origin of the word is uncertain and disputed; the recipe's own explanation, a fancied resemblance to risen dough, is the traditional etymology repeated in cookbooks of the era rather than an established one. What dates the page most is not the frying but the confident physiology at the end, written at a time when the workings of pancreatic secretion were much discussed and popular writers were quick to conclude that eating the gland would lend you its powers.