Veal Kidneys with Mushrooms, Mustard, and Port

Unlike Americans, who tend to avoid organ meats, the French consider many of what we euphemistically call variety meats and the British call offal to be among the best that a particular animal—usually a lamb or a calf—has to offer. True, there’s a hierarchy of animal parts, with veal or lamb sweetbreads reigning as the most expensive and luxurious, closely followed by kidneys, livers, and brains. Tripe (stomach tissue), tongues, and lungs form a second category, while odder things, such as eyes, testicles, and teats, popular in the eighteenth century, form a third category and are rarely eaten anymore even by the adventurous French.