Important: Safety Warning
This recipe calls for animal brains or related nervous-system tissue. Cattle brain and spinal tissue can transmit bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), the cause of variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease in humans, which is fatal and has no treatment.
This information has been left in for historical purposes but should not be acted upon.
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Sweetbread Croquettes
Boil in salted water twenty minutes, two pairs of sweetbreads. Throw them into cold water for a few minutes and remove the skins and little pipes. Cut them into dice; also one-half can mushrooms. Put one large tablespoonful of butter in a saucepan; when it bubbles, add one tablespoonful of flour; cook well, then add one small cupful of cream. Cook and add sweetbreads and mushrooms.
Heat well, take from the fire and add beaten yolks of two eggs. When cool, form into croquettes, roll in beaten egg, cracker crumbs and fry in hot lard.
A classic croquette built on a very thick cream sauce, and the whole thing hinges on chilling. Note also that sweetbreads are the thymus and pancreas gland, not brain or spinal tissue — the standing warning above is a generic one attached by cataloguers and does not describe what this recipe uses.
- What sweetbreads areTwo pairs means the throat and heart sweetbreads — thymus and pancreas — of veal or lamb, perhaps a pound or so in total. Veal is the usual choice; order ahead from a butcher, as supermarkets rarely stock them.
- Soak before you boilModern practice is to soak sweetbreads in several changes of cold water for an hour or two first to draw out blood, then poach. Twenty minutes in salted water is right for veal; the cold-water plunge afterwards firms them so the membrane and the "little pipes" (vessels and connective tissue) peel away cleanly.
- Press themAfter peeling, weight the sweetbreads between two plates for half an hour. They dice far more neatly, and the croquette mixture holds together better.
- Half a can of mushroomsPeriod tin sizes varied, so the quantity is approximate; something in the region of 4 oz drained. Fresh mushrooms sautéed dry until their liquid has cooked off will substitute — wet mushrooms will loosen the panada.
- The sauceOne tablespoon each of butter and flour to one small cupful of cream (a period cupful, likely somewhat under 8 fl oz) gives a sauce that seems thin in the pan. Cook the roux and then the finished sauce hard, several minutes, until it pulls away from the sides; the egg yolks off the heat thicken it further as it cools.
- Chill, don't just cool"When cool" means thoroughly cold. Spread the mixture in a shallow pan, cover and refrigerate at least three hours or overnight. Warm croquette mixture cannot be shaped and will burst in the fat.
- BreadingFor a crust that survives frying, roll each croquette in crumbs first, then beaten egg, then crumbs again, and chill the shaped croquettes another 30 minutes before frying.
- FryingHot lard means roughly 375F, deep enough to float them. They are fried only to brown and heat through — two to three minutes. Lard gives the period flavour; a neutral oil will do the same job.
- YieldPerhaps a dozen croquettes, serving four to six. Peas or a plain cream sauce are common accompaniments to sweetbreads of the period.
Croquettes were a staple of the American genteel table from roughly 1880 to 1920, and sweetbread was among the more prestigious fillings: a small, perishable gland that had to be bought fresh and used quickly, which made serving it a quiet display of a well-run kitchen with reliable market access. The technique comes from French professional cookery — a stiff cream panada bound with yolks, chilled, shaped, crumbed and deep-fried — and was spread in America partly through the late-century cooking schools. Canned mushrooms in the ingredient list help date the recipe: by the 1890s tinned goods were cheap and respectable, and cookbooks called for them without apology.