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Broiled Sweetbreads
Wash and parboil a pair of sweetbreads, cut them in half lengthwise and set aside to cool. When ready to broil, season with salt and pepper, baste with melted butter and broil over a clear fire for five minutes. Take up on a heated dish and pour over melted butter.
The recipe assumes a cook who already knows how sweetbreads are prepared, and compresses about an hour of work into the word "parboil." That step is the whole dish.
- The hinge: soak, blanch, peel, pressSoak the sweetbreads in several changes of cold water for an hour or two until the water runs clear, then simmer 15-20 minutes in salted water with a squeeze of lemon. Cool, strip the outer membrane and any tubes, then press between two plates with a weight for an hour so they hold together on the grill.
- "A pair"The rounder heart bread and the longer throat bread; a pair generally runs about 1 to 1 1/4 lb and will serve two generously or four as a first course.
- SourcingVeal sweetbreads usually mean a trip to a specialty butcher and often arrive frozen. Thaw in the refrigerator and use within a day; thymus and pancreas spoil faster than muscle meat and should smell clean and milky, never sour.
- "A clear fire"Coals burned down past the flame, with no smoke and no flare-up from dripping butter. Under a modern gas or electric broiler, use the top rack setting at full heat.
- Five minutesThat is total time over a hot fire, roughly two to three minutes a side, and it is enough because the parboiling cooked them through. The broiling is only for color and a firm exterior; longer and they dry to cotton.
- Basting butterMelted butter over direct coals scorches. Brush lightly before and once during, and keep the finishing butter separate and hot, off the fire.
- ServingThe dish is bare by design. Cookbooks of the period commonly suggest a squeeze of lemon, a little chopped parsley, or the sweetbreads set on toast to catch the butter, with peas or asparagus alongside.
Sweetbreads are the thymus and pancreas of a calf. The name is usually explained as "sweet" for their mild, faintly milky flavor and "bread" from an Old English word for flesh, though the derivation is not settled and the sugar-and-baking reading can only be ruled out as folk explanation, not proven wrong from the record. They were among the most prized items on an American or British table around 1900, expensive enough to appear at banquets and delicate enough to be prescribed for invalids and convalescents, which is why cookbooks of this period often give them their own section with numerous treatments — broiled, larded, creamed, in patty shells, breaded and fried. The brevity here is telling: a household cook working from The Twentieth Century Cook Book was expected to know that parboiling, peeling and pressing came first, so the author spends the words on the part a beginner might rush, the short turn over a clear fire. Offal of this kind largely dropped out of the ordinary American repertoire after mid-century and returned largely through restaurant kitchens.