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Jellied Sweetbread Salad
Aspic jelly may be used for this, or take the clear consomme and season with one teaspoonful of lemon juice and two tablespoonfuls of tarragon vinegar to each quart of prepared consomme; allow also two-thirds of a box of gelatine. For each pint of mayonnaise or other dressing, allow onethird of a box of gelatine; soak it in as little cold water as possible, dissolve over hot water and when beginning to thicken, mix it with the dressing; then add the prepared meat and celery. Use large oval molds, pour in the prepared consomme until half an inch deep and stand on ice until set. Put a somewhat smaller pan filled with cold water, in the center and fill the space between the two with more of the liquid jelly. When firm, dip out the cold water and add warm water until the pan can be lifted out. Fill the space with the salad mixture and put away until firm.
This is an assembly recipe: it assumes you already have poached sweetbreads, cooked celery-cut-fine, and a clear stock on hand. Most of the work sits in those assumptions.
- "A box of gelatine"A box was generally about one ounce of granulated gelatine, roughly four of today's quarter-ounce envelopes, though box sizes were not perfectly standardised. On that basis two-thirds of a box per quart of consomme is roughly 2 1/2 to 3 envelopes, and one-third of a box per pint of mayonnaise is roughly 1 1/3 envelopes.
- The sweetbreads themselves"Prepared meat" means veal sweetbreads soaked in several changes of cold water, blanched, cooled, the membrane and connective tissue pulled away, then poached through in salted acidulated water and diced. They must be fully cooked before they go anywhere near the mould; nothing in the jelly stage cooks them.
- The hinge: temperature matchingDissolved gelatine hitting cold mayonnaise sets in threads and ruins the texture. Let the gelatine cool until it is syrupy but still fluid, have the dressing at cool room temperature, and pour it in a thin stream while whisking hard.
- Consomme must be clear and it must be strongCloudy stock makes a grey jelly. Use a properly clarified consomme, or a commercial aspic, and check the seasoning while it is warm — chilled jelly tastes noticeably blander than the same liquid tasted hot.
- Tarragon vinegarStill sold, and worth using rather than substituting: it carries the anise note that makes this kind of savoury jelly read as French rather than merely sour. Two tablespoons to a quart is a light hand.
- The mould-within-a-mouldThe cold water in the inner pan keeps it from floating and helps the surrounding jelly set against it. Warm water, not hot, releases it — hot water will melt a channel into the wall of jelly and the salad will bleed through.
- Chilling timesAllow at least 30 minutes for the half-inch base layer, an hour or more for the jelly walls, and several hours (overnight is easier) for the filled mould. Unmould by dipping the outside in warm water for a few seconds and inverting onto a chilled platter.
- Holding and servingA gelatine salad built on cooked offal and mayonnaise is a refrigerator dish from start to finish; it should not stand out on a buffet for more than about two hours. The quantities given (a quart of jelly, a pint of dressing) suggest a mould for a table rather than for individuals, though the recipe gives no portion count.
Sweetbreads — the thymus and pancreas of a calf — were a genteel, expensive meat in American cookery around 1900, mild enough to be considered suitable for invalids and elegant enough for a ladies' luncheon, which is exactly the double duty this dish performs. The technique on show is the great party trick of the aspic era: a shell of clear jelly built up around a smaller vessel, then filled with an opaque bound salad, so that the finished mould shows a pale core through a glassy amber wall. Commercial granulated gelatine, sold by the box and reliable in a way that home-boiled calf's foot stock never was, is what put that effect within reach of a household cook rather than a hotel chef, and cookbooks of this period lean on it constantly. Its appearance under "Sandwiches" reflects how these books organised the cold buffet — sandwiches, moulded salads and dainty things generally were filed together as the food of teas, receptions and hot-weather suppers.