1 small pinch of cayenne pepper.
1 table-spoonful of mushroom catsup.
Juice of half a lemon.
Parboil the sweetbreads for five minutes. The water should be boiling when they are put in. Plunge immediately into very cold salt water. Let them lie in this for five minutes, wipe them dry with a soft, clean cloth, and lay upon a cool dish until perfectly cold. Lard them closely with the strips of salt pork. Stew gently for twenty-five minutes in the gravy, which must be rich and thick. Add lemon-juice, catsup, cayenne, and, if needed, a little salt. Lay the sweetbreads in order on a flat dish, pour the gravy over them, and garnish with sliced lemon laid in the triangular spaces left between three-cornered bits of fried toast.
N.B. A pleasant addition to this dish, as to the brown fricassee of sweetbreads, is force-meat of chopped beef or veal very finely minced and worked to a paste with hard-boiled yolk of egg, a little crumbed bread, a spoonful or two of gravy or butter. Season very highly, work in the beaten yolk of a raw egg to bind the mixture, and make into oval balls a little larger than olives. Flour these, and lay on a floured plate, so as not to touch one another. Set in a quick oven until they are firm and hissing hot, garnish the dish with them instead of the sliced lemon, and pour the hot gravy over them and the triangles of toast as well as the sweetbreads. An outer circle of parsley looks well with these.
Larded Sweetbread—Fried.
3 or 4 sweetbreads.
4 or 5 slices very fat salt pork.
A little pepper.