Miss Parloa's kitchen companion

Clean the sweetbreads, and soak them in a pan of water for an hour or more ; then put them in a stew-pan, with boiling water enough to cover, and cook for twenty minutes. At the end of that time take them up, and put them in cold water for two minutes. On removing them from the cold water, rub a table-spoonful of butter over them, and dredge with salt and pepper. Cook in a hot oven for twenty minutes, basting with brown sauce every five minutes. Brown Sauce. — To make the sauce, put into a stew-pan the stock, vegetables, and clove already mentioned, and heat the mixture to the boiling-point. Mix the cornstarch with five table-spoonfuls of water, and stir into the mixture in the stew-pan. Cook for a quarter of an hour ; then add two table-spoonfuls of butter, one teaspoonful of salt, and one-eighth of a teaspoonful of pepper. Simmer for five minutes longer, and strain. Use about a gill and a half of this sauce in basting the sweetbreads, and when the dish is served, pour the remaining sauce around the meat. If the stock was seasoned with vegetables and spice before it was used for the sauce, these seasonings may be omitted in making the sauce. Braised Sweetbreads. After cleaning the sweetbreads, drop them into a saucepan containing boiling water enough to cover them, and boil for ten minutes. Take them from the water, lay them in a shallow dish, and season with salt and pepper. Make a sauce as follows, the quantities being sufficient for half a dozen sweetbreads : — Dissolve a teaspoonful of beef extract in a cupful of warm water. Put a table-spoonful and a half of butter into a small frying-pan with one teaspoonful of chopped onion, a bit of parsley, half a teaspoonful of chopped carrot, and a bay leaf. Cook slowly for five minutes ; then add one heaping teaspoonful of flour, and stir until brown. Draw the frying-pan back to a cooler part of the stove, and gradually add the dissolved beef extract. Season with salt and pepper, and simmer for three minutes. Strain this sauce over the sweetbreads, and cook them slowly in the oven for an hour, basting frequently with the sauce in the pan. At serving-time place the sweetbreads on a warm platter, and pour a clear brown sauce around them. Spindled Sweetbreads. Clean two heart sweetbreads, and cover them with boiling water. Add a table-spoonful of lemon juice, a teaspoonful of salt, a slice of onion, ten pepper-corns, and a piece of stick cinnamon about an inch long. Place on the fire, and cook for twenty minutes. At the end of that time take the sweetbreads from the hot water, and drop them into a bowl of cold water. When they become cold, wipe them dry, and cut into pieces about an inch and a half square and half an inch thick. Cut fat bacon in slices as thin as a wafer, and divide these slices into squares. Season the sweetbreads with salt and pepper ; then roll them in melted butter, and also roll lightly in flour. String the bacon and sweetbreads on small skewers, Sptadled Sweetbreads. alternating with squares of each kind of meat. Rest the ends of the skewers on a narrow cake-pan, and place in a hot oven for eight minutes. Serve each skewerful on a slice of toast.