Name: Terrine of Veal Sweetbreads (Terrine de Ris de Veau)
Cuisine: French
Ingredients: Melted lard (optional); Mirepoix (4 ounces finely chopped carrots, small branch finely chopped celery, 4 ounces finely chopped onion, 1 ounce butter, 1 teaspoon dried, crumbled, mixed herbs, ½ bay leaf, finely crumbled or chopped, salt); 2 cups gelatinous veal stock; 1 bay leaf for each terrine; About 8 ounces thin sheets fresh pork fat; 2 lobes (about 1½ pounds) veal sweetbreads; 2 ounces fillet of pork, finely chopped; 4 ounces veal, all fat and nervous tissue removed, finely chopped; 2 chicken livers, finely chopped; 5 ounces fresh fatback, cut into tiny cubes; 1 small tin truffles or truffle peelings, chopped (liquid added to stock); ⅓ cup Madeira (or good sherry or port or Cognac); Salt, pepper, nutmeg, cayenne; 2½ ounces stale bread, crusts removed, crumbled; 2 eggs

Preparation info

Difficulty
Easy

Appears in

Simple French Food

By Richard Olney

Published 1974

About

The mode is now on the decline (chicken in vinegar, bass in pastry, and duck with green peppercorns having risen to stardom) but, during the 1960’s, sweetbread terrines proliferated on the menus of France’s fashionable restaurants. They were all poor, vapid things, underseasoned (except for one master who leant heavily on the cayenne) but, otherwise, mysteriously defying analysis: white, parboiled sweetbreads trapped in a white and remarkably insipid sort of panade—wrapped in their w