Salpicon is made of cooked chicken, sweetbreads, veal, or calf’s brains cut into small dice, mixed with mushrooms, a little chopped truffle and chopped tongue. One meat alone, or a combination of two or more, may be used. The mixture is then combined with enough good sauce to make it creamy. A white sauce should be used with white meats; a brown sauce when the dark meat and livers of chicken are used. (See “Century Cook Book,” pages 80-299.)
A plain white sauce is made as follows: Put a tablespoonful of butter in a saucepan. When the butter is hot add a tablespoonful of flour and cook them together for a few minutes, not letting them brown; remove from the fire and add a cupful of stock. Add the liquor very slowly at first, stirring constantly to keep it smooth. Return the sauce to the fire, add a teaspoonful of salt, a quarter teaspoonful of pepper, and a little cream, if convenient. Stir constantly until the sauce is thickened. Lastly, add the beaten yolks of one or two eggs to the sauce after it has been taken off the fire.
SWEETBREADS
Sweetbreads are the thymus gland and the pancreas of calves and lambs. They are commonly called by butchers the throat and the stomach, or heart, sweetbreads. The former is the larger, the latter is the whiter, rounder, and more delicate.
TO PREPARE SWEETBREADS
Soak the sweetbreads in cold water for two hours, changing the water several times. Put them on the fire in cold water. When they are whitened and firm to the touch, or parboiled, remove and immerse them again in cold water to blanch them. Remove all the pipes, fibers, and fatty substance. Roll each one in a piece of cheese-cloth, draw the cloth tight and tie it at the ends, pressing the sweetbread into an oval shape. Place them under a light weight for several hours.
NO. 51. BAKED SWEETBREADS WITH SALT PORK ON TOP.
BAKED SWEETBREADS
Parboil and blanch the sweetbreads. Marinate them by standing them for two hours in a mixture of one beaten egg, a teaspoonful of onion juice, one half teaspoonful of salt, one quarter teaspoonful of pepper, and one tablespoonful of chopped parsley. Turn them in the marinade occasionally so they will absorb the seasoning. Roll them in cracker dust and place them in a pan on very thin slices of salt pork, and place a thin slice of pork on top of each one. Bake in a hot oven fifteen or twenty minutes, or until they are tender and brown. The pork will crisp and the sweetbread will brown around it.