Home › Meats and Entrees › Sweetbreads Financiere
Sweetbreads Financiere
(Paris.) Trim and parboil two pairs of sweetbreads; fry them with 1 ounce butter, 1 carrot, 1 onion, some herbs, and 1 cup of stock. Cook for 3/4 hour, strain the stock over them on a dish, and serve with a border of 6 truffles, 6 mushrooms, 6 olives, 6 cocks'-combs, and 6 forcemeat balls made of chicken, bread, etc., which have been simmered in 1/2 pint of stock, with a glass of Madeira. SWEETBREADS (as cooked in Italy.).
Soak and parboil 2 large heart sweetbreads. Cut each into 4 pieces and fry in butter with salt, pepper, and parsley. When cool, dip each in some white stock or Bechamel sauce, then in egg and bread-crumbs and fry until brown. Serve with a brown sauce with mushrooms and a border of spaghetti, both cooked, the latter with tomatoes and cheese on top.
Two versions of the same organ meat, one in the grand French manner and one Italian and fried. Both assume you know how to handle sweetbreads before you start, which is where most of the work actually is.
- Buy and prep the sweetbreads firstSoak them in several changes of cold water, or lightly salted water, for 2-4 hours in the refrigerator until they look pale, then blanch 2-3 minutes in simmering water, cool, and peel away the outer membrane and any gristle. For the French version, press them flat between two plates with a weight for an hour before braising; this is the step the recipe silently assumes.
- Cocks' combsA standard garnish of the classic financière and effectively unobtainable now. They were blanched, peeled of their outer skin, and poached white. Leave them out, or substitute another 6 mushroom caps or small quenelles; nothing is lost that the modern table will notice.
- A glass of MadeiraIn period cookbooks this is a wineglass, about 1/4 to 1/3 cup. Use a dry or medium Sercial or Verdelho, not a sweet cream Madeira, and let it reduce with the stock rather than adding it at the end.
- "Fry them" means braiseAn ounce of butter, aromatics and a cup of stock for 45 minutes is a braise, not a fry, though the recipe does not say to cover the pan. Brown the pressed sweetbreads in the butter first, then add carrot, onion, herbs and stock, cover, and hold at a bare simmer. Boiling makes them grainy.
- Straining the stockAfter 45 minutes the braising liquid is thin. Strain it, then reduce hard to a few spoonfuls of glaze before pouring it over; poured as-is it floods the dish and slackens the garnish.
- The forcemeat ballsRaw chicken pounded with soaked bread, egg and seasoning, rolled small and poached in stock — essentially quenelles. Poach them at a shiver, never a boil, or they break up. Test one before committing the batch.
- The Italian version's breadingChilling matters: the fried, cooled pieces need to be cold and the bechamel coating set firm before the egg and crumbs go on, or the sauce runs into the fat. Refrigerate the coated pieces 30 minutes before frying them a second time until golden.
- ServingNeither version gives a yield. The financiere serves four to six as a first course; the Italian version, with spaghetti, serves four as a main. Both want to go out hot and immediately — reheated sweetbreads turn dense.
The financiere garnish belongs to the grand repertoire of nineteenth-century French restaurant cooking: truffles, mushrooms, olives, quenelles and cocks' combs bound with a Madeira-scented sauce, the name generally taken as a reference to the financiers who could afford such extravagance. By 1900 it was less a specific recipe than a formula that could be draped over sweetbreads, chicken, vol-au-vents or calf's head, and here it appears under the heading "(Paris.)", with the second version labelled "as cooked in Italy". The Italian variant that follows shows the other end of the same organ's career: parboiled, crumbed, fried and set against spaghetti with tomato and cheese, closer to a fritto than to a restaurant entree.