At market she found a fine pair of sweetbreads, one of the dainties her butcher was not fashionable enough to charge a fancy price for, and indeed she found thirty cents a pair an outside price in Greenfield; these were twenty-five, however, and had they been as small as they sometimes are, she would not have bought them; but they were large and white.
As soon as they came they were put into salt and water and an hour later into boiling water, and parboiled for fifteen minutes, and cold water poured over them. All gristle and skin was now removed, and one cut into small pieces.
An hour before dinner the remains of the fricasseed fowl were brought out. Less than half had been eaten. There remained a wing, part of the breast, a leg, and the back and side bones. Molly cut the drumstick off, laid it with the side bones for a grill for breakfast,—it would help out the minced mutton; the rest, which were nice joints, she laid, covered with sauce as they were, in a plate, and told Marta to beat an egg, dip them in it, taking care every part was covered; then to lay them in abundance of cracker crumbs, pat them gently, and fry them just like breaded chops.
Meantime she had gathered the sauce from the chicken, which, by her direction, had been poured over it when the dish was changed, and put it into a small saucepan with a gill of stock, then the pieces of sweetbread, and put the saucepan where it would simmer. She then cut circles from slices of stale bread, half an inch thick, each circle cut in half to form canapées; she dipped each in milk, and then laid it in flour, covered it well with flour, and left it so.
“Marta, when you fry the chicken, drop these pieces of bread in the pot. Be sure to shake off all superfluous flour; handle them gently for fear of breaking, and let them fry pale brown. Be careful for the first minute after they are in; they will sputter, as they are wet. Lay them round the sweetbreads when you take them up.”
Marta had already sliced some tomatoes; these were laid in a dish, and bread crumbs, bits of butter, and pepper and salt sprinkled over each layer, on the top more crumbs and tiny bits of butter thickly strewed; then the dish was put to bake for half an hour.
“Marta, a few minutes before taking up the sweetbreads, stir into the gravy a small tea-spoonful of white thickening. I see it will not be thick enough with the fricassee sauce. Now you have potatoes on, tomatoes in the oven, your frying-kettle back of the stove, soup ready to heat up five minutes before dinner, chicken ready crumbed, and I will make a vanilla soufflé.”
Gouffe’s recipe for vanilla soufflé was as follows, Molly using only a third of the original, which calls for a quart of milk:
“One third of a quart of milk (not quite three gills), two table-spoonfuls of flour, two of sugar, a tea-spoonful of vanilla extract, a pinch of salt. Mix the flour with part of milk, set the rest to boil; when it boils, mix both together as you would corn starch; if by chance it is not smooth, strain it, return to fire, stirring well. Take it off when it boils, put to it the yolks of two eggs, and beat very well; then add the whites, beaten till you can turn the dish over without their slipping. The whites must be stirred in with greatest gentleness,—any quick stirring will cause them to liquefy and spoil your soufflé; when the whites are blended, bake in a buttered dish twenty minutes.”
Molly prepared it and told Marta to put it in the oven when she put the soup on to get hot, that they might have about finished dinner when it was done; but it was better for them to wait for the soufflé than the soufflé for them, for waiting means spoiling it. Molly made some hard sauce, which she flavored with wine, and then left the dinner to Marta.