There are a very great number of ways of cooking sweetbreads, but they chiefly depend upon the sauce served with them. Sweetbreads are very useful to mix with other things as well as for making the insides of rich pies. For instance, boiled sweetbreads cut up with small button mushrooms, slices of red tongue, the white meat of fowl cut up, calf's brains, lean red ham, or some small black truffles, all stewed in some really good Bechamel sauce, make a most delicious dish.

Sweetbreads when baked are often larded, i.e., stuck over with pieces of bacon fat inserted a little way into the meat. Sweetbreads, fried or baked, are also very nice with tomato sauce, mushroom sauce, and can also be served with spinach.

Fried Or Baked Sweetbreads

Calf's sweetbreads are by far the best, but unfortunately are often very expensive. All sweetbreads, whether calf's, lamb's, sheep's, pig's, etc., should be treated as follows: - Parboil them for five or ten minutes according to their size, take them out, and throw them into cold water, and let them get quite cold. Take them out of the water, and carefully trim them from skin and flap. The drawback to sweetbreads is, that mixed with the delicious soft white meat is too often found pieces of skin, which are exceedingly unpleasant in the mouth, causing real inconvenience to persons with delicate stomachs; therefore, peel the sweetbreads, especially small ones, and remove these impediments. Next, dry, flour, egg-and-bread-crumb (see No. 20) the sweetbreads, and fry them a nice bright golden colour. (See No. 6.) Serve with some rich brown gravy.

The sweetbread, especially if large, can be baked in the oven. Do not egg-and-bread-crumb it, but cover it with thin slices of fat bacon, and baste it. When done, take it out, drain it from its fat, and serve with some rather thick Bechamel sauce; ornament with fried bread (see No. 7) and chopped parsley sprinkled over the sweetbread.

Curried Sweetbreads

Egg-and-bread-crumb the sweetbreads. (See Sweetbreads, Fried.) Fry them as directed, and pour some curry sauce round them, not over them. (See Curry Sauce).