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Sweetbread and Cucumber Salad
Add an equal measure of half inch dice sweetbread and inch diced and drained cucumbers, mix with a cream dressing; serve in cucumber boats. For the boats pare large cucumbers, cut them round and scoop out the centers, fill with cracked ice or drop in ice water until needed, that they may be very crisp; then dry with a towel and fill with the salad.
A two-ingredient salad that stands or falls on the sweetbreads, which the original assumes you have already prepared. Everything else is assembly.
- The sweetbreads are not rawThe recipe takes for granted that you begin with cooked sweetbreads. They are soaked in several changes of cold water until pale, blanched, simmered gently in salted acidulated water for about 15-20 minutes, then plunged into ice water, peeled of membrane and fat, pressed between two plates under a weight, and chilled thoroughly before dicing. Skip the pressing and the dice will crumble into the dressing.
- Which sweetbread to buyVeal or lamb thymus (the elongated "throat" sweetbread) and the rounder pancreas ("heart" sweetbread) are both sold as sweetbreads. The heart sweetbread is the plumper and more compact of the two and is easier to cut into clean half-inch dice; it is worth ordering ahead from a butcher, as supermarkets rarely carry either.
- Cream dressingIn a book of this period the term can mean a cooked dressing thickened with egg yolk and finished with cream, or lightly whipped cream sharpened with lemon juice and a little salt and cayenne. A mayonnaise loosened with cream is a serviceable modern substitute.
- The dice sizesHalf-inch sweetbread against inch cucumber is likely intentional rather than an error: the cucumber is watery and shrinks, the sweetbread does not. If you prefer them uniform, cut both at half an inch.
- Draining the cucumber"Drained" is doing real work. Salt the diced cucumber lightly, let it stand 20-30 minutes in a colander, then pat dry. Undrained cucumber will thin the dressing to a puddle within minutes of dressing the salad.
- The boatsThe recipe says only to pare large cucumbers, cut them round and hollow the centers. Cut them into manageable crosswise lengths and scoop out the seedy middle with a small spoon or melon baller, leaving a shell sturdy enough to hold the salad; a sliver trimmed from one side will help them sit flat.
- The ice-water soakThe recipe leaves the cucumbers in cracked ice or ice water 'until needed'; a short soak is enough to firm the shells. Dry them well or the water will run into the dressing.
- Assembly and yieldDress at the last moment and serve cold. The recipe gives no quantities beyond 'an equal measure' of each, so the yield depends entirely on how much sweetbread you start with and how large the cucumbers are.
Sweetbreads were an expensive cut and carried none of the apologetic tone that offal attracts now; they turn up in period cookery creamed, braised, larded, in patties and, as here, cold in salads, valued for a mild flavor and a texture nothing else quite duplicates. Their appearance in the salad chapter reflects a period fashion for the composed, dressed salad as a course in its own right rather than a leafy afterthought, and for serving food inside something else — tomato cases, pepper cups, cucumber boats — which let a hostess present a cold dish with visible effort behind it. The trick of crisping hollowed cucumber in ice water is the same principle behind celery curls and radish roses, standard equipment in the garnishing repertoire of the period.