June 9, 2017 • 39 mins
Not exactly sweet and definitely not a bread, sweetbreads are a type of offal with a pedigree among gastronomes. We explore how people treated this odd, tasty gland in the past, and how it made a comeback.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:08):
Hello, and welcome to food Stuff. I'm Anyries and I'm
Lauren bulk Bom, and today we're talking about something that
we've gotten a lot of listener requests for sweetbreads. Sweetbreads. Yeah,
thanks to Lindsay Ben and Micah All for writing in
about this one. And we're talking about sweetbreads, like not
(00:29):
sweet pastry breads. Right, this is not a sweet bread
It's not a bread that is sweet, which is what
I thought sweetbreads were until last year. Not exaggerating, Yeah,
I thought on a many and I was like, I
love a pastry sen rolls in the face. I'm comforted
(00:50):
that the Internet tells me this is a common misconception
because the name is confusing. Sure, yes, yeah, and sometimes
it does refer to sweetbreads. If there's a space, If
there's space, yes, sweet spacebreads, yes, pastry Yeah, then you're
then you're in for maybe a delicious croissant. But we're
(01:10):
talking about sweetbreads as in a type of awful. That's
how you pronounce it, right, yeah, which is unfortunate, but
it comes from off All are cuts from the carcass
of an animal that are not skillful muscle and quote
fall off when the animal is butchered, and are also
(01:30):
called variety meats. Yeah, yeah, it's it's just a general
word for for for organs kind of sometimes um also
sometimes called the quinto corto in Rome a k a.
The fifth quarter of the animal, which I think is
real cute um. In Spanish, awful istas and sweetbreads are
(01:52):
sometimes referred to as molier huss um, although molier huss
can also refer to gizzards like chicken gizzer m. I
have no idea why this is. I suspect it has
to do with the shape. I think they kind of
looks similar. They do, but it's a different color anyway. Okay,
Malia has a sweetbread Mola has are particularly popular as
(02:14):
an appetizer and Argentina apparently. But yes, they are an
organ meat right, and they are most commonly from the
famous gland um. And this is sold in two usually
connected pieces, the irregularly shaped throat sweetbreads in the slightly larger,
lower fat and thus more desirable heart sweetbreads. Yes, uh,
(02:37):
similar organ, just kind of in too slightly different places.
It's it's doing the same stuff working together, right and
less commonly included in the definition of sweetbreads. It's the
pancreas are the stomach slash cut slash belly sweetbreads and
stomach sweetbreads are not highly regarded in much of the
culinary community, and it's often sometimes called the fall sweetbread
(03:01):
but they are cheaper, which might be because thymus drive.
Swetbreads begin shrinking with the animal has reached six months old,
and the pancrease sticks around. That's because the thymus is
shut off by high concentrations of sex hormones that flood
an animal's body during puberty. Why that's a great question.
I have no idea, but human thymus is work the
(03:22):
same way. Thamus is what creates and matures your lifetime
supply of T cells, which are part of your body's
immune system, and most of these are created before puberty,
and the thamus then shrinks and declines in T cell
production afterward. Anyway, now I'm thinking of Resident Evil and like,
(03:43):
just to entice you, I think we're going to come
back to Resident Evil at the end of this episode.
Oh excellent. Uh. The type of sweeprads you're most likely
to encounter on a menu or in a store are
veal sweetbreads um or vealer lamb. Really right, um, but
you can find pork as well. And according to nineteen
eleven The Grocer's Encyclopedia, quote sweetbread, the soft milky thymus,
(04:07):
glands of the young calf, and lamb, the former being
the more highly esteemed and considered one of the greatest
of all meat delicacies. And kind of going off of that, Um,
if we look at the name sweetbread, the first time
it popped up was in a sixteenth century book. And
there's a lot of Old English here with like extra
(04:29):
ease and stuff. So I'm going to try to not
miss this. Where's Jonathan Strickland when you need him? Oh?
I know, we should have bought him in anyway, the
book is called The History i e. Of Man and
quote a certain glandulous part called thymus, which in calis
cows cows. Oh okay, it's spelled c a l u
(04:54):
e s calves calves, not cows calves. Makes way more sense. Okay, continue, Sorry,
Lauren and Annie bungle through Old English. The sweetbread episode
that's actually a really good type, um, is most pleasant
to be eaten. I suppose we call it the sweet
(05:15):
bread end quote. So one theory is that sweetbread might
be referring to the fact that thamus meat is relatively
sweeter than other meats. I guess, and bread could come
from the Old English bread b r e d e,
meaning roasted meats are flesh or bread as in another
(05:35):
word for morsel, because they kind of look like perhaps
because the name, most people are confused about what sweetbreads
are like we alluded to even chefs they came from,
and they also very probably don't want to know. Yeah,
there's a there's a perception in in a lot of
modern Western thought that that awful is awful, man, it's
(05:59):
tasty more and that later providing extra complication to the term. Um.
You've also got the words sweet meats kicking around, which
generally means a sugared confection but is occasionally used to
mean sweetbread. So they're not meats. They're not like candied bacon. No, well,
I guess it could be because candied bacon could be
(06:19):
a sugared confection. Usually just means like a like like
a small like like pastry, or like a like a
like a or something like that. Yeah, okay, yeah, like
a piece of candy. Just want sweetmeat. Sometimes he used
to mean sweetbread. The origin of sweetmeat lies in the
Old English circa tenth century c E. When the word
(06:43):
meat M E t e simply meant food. The narrower
definition of meat being like animal flesh that we consume
um didn't pop up until around thirteen hundred, So when
it was first used, sweetmeat meant just a sweet food. Wow,
the evolution of language. Oh, it's really great. I really
(07:04):
want to do that etymology show sometimes maybe someday, Lauren,
maybe maybe someday. So to prepare sweetbreads, and this is uh.
Annie read a lot of research about this, has never
done it herself. I've never done myself either. All right,
but we're in this together. But but but this is
a this is the tried and true method from many sources.
(07:25):
You first want to remove any impurities by soaking them,
usually in cold and I read in some places salted water, water,
but sometimes milk or butter milk, anywhere from three to
twenty four hours. And according to what I read, it's
a good idea to change out that milk or water
whatever you're soaking in a couple of times. That also
helps out loosen up the membrane around the actual flesh
(07:46):
that you want to consume, and um, then you blanche
go back and revisit that favorite thing is my absolute favorite,
that is sarcasm. And then you do that by putting
it in a cold pot of cold water or chicken stock,
bringing it to a boil, simmering for about five minutes,
(08:07):
and then chilling rapidly by placing a nice water. UM.
So this doesn't cook them, but it firms them up
and makes um. Removing what I frequently referred to as
the quote grizzly bits easier, which has the next step
And it sounds like it's pretty tricky um and or
just sort of gross yep. Um. Once it's cool enough
(08:30):
to handle, you do your best to remove the veins,
the fat, the s new, the gristle, and sometimes the membrane,
depending on the recipe. Um. And you can use a
knife or your very own fingers. And you want to
keep the sweetmeat. It's not not sweetmeat sweetbread sweetbreads, confusing myself.
(08:53):
You want to keep them whole and enlarger clumps. And
after this, a lot of chefs like to chill and
press the meat into it even think that's a preference thing.
And actually so it's the blanching. Um. But that being
a preference is relatively new. Some people think it's more
tender if you don't blanch. Yeah, if you haven't, if
(09:13):
you haven't ever seen uh sweetbreads, they're sort of this
like this like clumpy, massive clump stuff. Clump clump stuff.
That's an off branch show. Maybe we'll have a segments.
It sounds like a lumpy space princess show on how
(09:33):
stuff works. Anyway, once you have prepared done this like
preparation step to cook them, you can grill them, braise them,
or fry them. Those are the most common ways. But
they can't be poached, are bo broiled, almost boiled, And
(09:54):
I was like, wait a minute, no, Apparently they're very
difficult to overcook. So it's forgiving food to try. Um.
And they can cook for several minutes without getting tough. Yeah,
and they remain moist. Oh all right. Um. If you
look at traditional French and Italian recipes, uh, you can
often find them served in rich creamy sauces. Add richness
(10:18):
to a rich food share that's your French an Italian way. Yeah,
it is um and I think hearkening back to our
cauliflower episode, there was an uber rinch rich French cauliflower
recipe that involved sweetbreads. Yes, I still want to eat that.
It did sound good. Uh. And today you'll likely find
them paired with something sour or acidic or both, probably
(10:43):
the same thing, almost to compliment the richness of the meat,
like lemons or capers alongside bacon. I saw bacon a lot,
and vegetables like beans are peas or they can be
more of a supporting character to something like patte or sausage. Sure. Yeah,
that's the throughout history. Like like people just cook them
any which way they want to. Yeah. Um. And once
(11:06):
they've been cooked, what do they taste like? Uh? As
we're recording this, I have no idea, but the things
I read, I saw a lot of tender, rich, creamy, smooth,
and I can attest to this. Um, I've had sweetbreads there. Um.
Have you ever had like a like a liver patte? Yes? Okay,
so sweetbreads are like a slightly firmer like ready made
(11:30):
liver patte, Like it's just an organ hanging out in
an animal that's sort of tastes like liver patte. Um,
they're like a slightly sweet meat butter. Oh, like a meatcake.
I'm not I'm not sure if the words I'm saying
are making it sound more or less appetizing. And the
flavor is is really delicate, though compared with with liver Um,
(11:51):
it doesn't have this sort of like metallic or gamey
twinge that you get from liver um and and some
other kinds of awful. Um. If you've never had patta
out there in a podcast land um, okay, Like if
you've ever had a flowerless chocolate cake, like one that's
like really like like like rich and dense and creamy
(12:11):
and kind of like fine grained on the tongue, um
the text or something like that. And the taste is
a little bit like the char on the outside of
a grilled steak, but without the char flavor, Like it's
just sort of like sweet and meaty, okay, like it.
That's the best way that I can think of to
describe It's it's a very it's a very individual profiled flavor,
(12:35):
So that was an excellent way to describe it, because
I'm generally like it was salty. I'm terrible at describing taste,
so my hat goes off to you, Thank you, thank you.
We will be going to Did you try some sweetbreads
at a place in Atlanta that has some called Holman infintion? Yeah?
(12:56):
Possibly before this episode airs time travel, I know podcasting
and publication schedules. I'm telling you. Um, sweetbreads are often
called the least awful tasting of awfuls, and this apparently
means less musty. Sure, musty is a good word for that,
for that metallic um gaming flavor that I was describing earlier.
(13:20):
Share Okay, I was thinking, like an old coat. That's terrible.
So sweetbreads are a good place to start your awful
journey if that is a thing you're looking to embark on.
I'm loving all the double meanings this is having. Now.
Hominems are the best they are if you want to
(13:41):
go on this journey, though it could be very expensive homophones,
I got that wrong, anyway, Go ahead, Yes, expensive journey. Yes.
Sweetbreads can range from seven dollars to sixteen dollars a pound,
which is a newish thing in our recent times because
they used to be very difficult thing to sell and
they go bad very quickly. So plan to cook dotty
soon after buying and most things I said, mind cook
(14:02):
the same day, And now I I don't know if
I'm prepared to. I really don't like preparing meat. I don't.
I don't know if I'm prepared to go out and
find sweetbreads and cook them at home. I have no problem.
I have no problem for preparing meat. Maybe maybe I'll
run the camera on that one. Okay, that's fine with me.
I'm sure nothing disasters will happen. Speaking of disasters, Uh no, no,
(14:27):
not speaking of disasters. But let's let's let's dig into,
um into how this entire eating this strange gland from
animals thing started started happening in human culture. But first
let's take a quick break for a word from our sponsor,
(14:51):
and we're back. Thank you sponsor, Yes, thank you sponsor.
So when exactly did this become a thing? Probably since
humans started hunting animals. Yeah, but infection. Next, throughout most
of our history, we haven't had refrigeration again, frozen food. Um,
(15:13):
and when humans had to butcher their own animals, you
didn't want to waste any of that hard work or
any of the animal so so yeah, so just eat
it it's there, find a way to make it good.
According to the book odd Bits, which is a great book, um,
these and other highly perishable organs were eaten in many
cultures by either the hunters themselves um a kind of
(15:35):
as a reward because they're tasty for their hard work,
or be because they were just the first person who
had access to them. They're going to go bad, go
on and eat it um. Or they were saved for
and for an esteemed group elder oh and uh. And
later they were probably saved and served to royalty when
the butchery happened. UM. As we said earlier, the first
(16:00):
that the first use of the term sweetbreads appeared around
the fifteen hundreds. Around that time, there was a recipe
from Italy that recommended um using veal or or goat
like like kids sweetbreads to make this kind of eggy
pottage that was seasoned interestingly with rosewater, saffron, ginger, cinnamon,
and sugar. Very fancy, yeah, very fancy pottage. Pottage sort
(16:27):
of like a very richly seasoned meat egg stew soufla thing.
If I just keep saying food words, isn't going to
make more sense Eventually? Maybe I also thought of pottage
was a pot of dessert. So I've been wrong about
(16:48):
many things. Sweetbreads, We've been wrong about many things. That's
also a good episode title. There we go. We have
a lot of contenders, a lot of strong contenders. A
lot of recipes around this time were crafted around sweetbreads,
which were viewed by the eighteenth nineteenth century Europeans as nutritious.
(17:09):
We'll examine that, claiming a bit um, thrifty and easy
to come by. This is very different than what it
is now. Yeah. Yeah, Also they like to taste, and
this time was the height of their popularity. The nineteenth
centuries their moment in the sun. So many meat dishes
were served with sweetbreads as a garnish huh yeah um,
(17:34):
and sweetbreads began to fall out of fashion towards the
end of the eighteenth century, with the introduction of industrialized farming, refrigeration,
grocery stores, and the removal of most consumers from the
process behind how their food got to their table, i e.
Not Between our own animals, right, and all of these
(17:56):
innovations drove down the price of me and made it
more readily available, but mass scale production didn't really allow
for the tricky process of getting awful and keeping it
intact and storing it intact and packaging, shipping and selling
it before it went bad. Um, and it just wasn't
cost effective for them, so they didn't want to do
it anymore. And as butcher's shops closed to make way
(18:19):
for these lower cost grocery stores, we lost a lot
of our knowledge of how to like buy and cook
rare types of meat as well. Sure. Um, this this
industrialization process is also what began to lead to um
to to awful and and bones from meat being um
processed and used as feed in livestock, which is another
(18:43):
thing we'll come back to in a few minutes. Um.
They've always been pretty consistently featured on French menus, though
particularly Read the Vote or Reveal sweetbreads and uh French
inspired cookbooks like The Joy of Cooking, of which was
first published in which I always forget about it seems
like such a modern cook bit to me anyway. Um.
(19:03):
The Joy of Cooking and also Julia Child's recipes from
the sixties on have have continued to feature sweetbreads. Yeah yeah, um.
They're also ground up in dog food and cat food,
and they's sometimes been used in meat based baby food. Um.
And yet definitely um have been part of the that
meat and bone meal that's used as animal feed on farms. Um.
(19:24):
Modern regulations in some areas outlaw that because of transmittable
brain diseases, which I'm betting you didn't think was a
sentence you'd here in this episode, and which I'll talk
more about in a depressing and slightly frightening tangent at
the end. And I'll make another resident evil reference. Awful
(19:46):
became all the rage once again and of scale restaurants
in the ninety nineties, but it fell away again towards
the end of the decade. And a note about the
popularity of the dish in the late nineties. Okay, so
sweetbreads are a major up point in the Hannibal Lecter
film Red Dragon, which is the prequel to Silence of
the Lambs, because his removal of a human thimus gland
(20:06):
from a victim and his notation on the I wasn't
paying attention when you said it a second ago. The
sweetbread entry the read de vous um and in his
copy of the French Encyclopedia of Cooking uh loose gastronomy Um.
That event leads an investigator to capture him, which is
(20:28):
why he's in prison. At the beginning of Silence of
the Lambs. Yeah, I do seem to recall that it's
all the sweetbreads. It's all the sweetbreads, um. But that
aside aside um. I think I think that that sweetbreads
United States popularity didn't so much fall away as like
kind of like justest state and morphed slowly into the
(20:51):
nose to tail movement, which which, if you will recall,
was was skipping merrily hand in hand with the farm
to table movement um throughout the late odds and early teens,
leading us to sweet breads are making a come back. Yeah,
don't call it a comeback right now, and not just
enough scale restaurants, um. And that's yeah. And part thinks
(21:12):
this idea that we shouldn't be wasting so much food
or killing an animals for certain pieces, although I did
read like a critique of that point of view is
that we aren't really wasting it because it is getting
used in dog food and cat food, and sweetbreads were
included on the Daily Meals Top food Trends. Yeah, I
(21:33):
definitely I feel that I've been seeing them more often,
But I do think it's like a rotating thing. It's hard.
It was hard for me to think of a menu
that I knew would have them, no matter what, if
you know what I mean, Like, I feel like they
pop up sometimes on menus. Yeah, it's also a freshness
issue because I mean, you know, it depends on because
they are taken from very young calves um or or
(21:56):
other livestock. And so the season in which there are
a whole bunch of very young livestock animals is a
particular season. Yeah, makes sense. Alright, So that brings us
to the end of our history segment. Yes, yes, when
we get back from this another short ad break, we
will discuss health and yes, so stick correct and we're back,
(22:34):
Thank you sponsor. So sweetbreads health, What's what's the deal there? Um?
It was actually really interesting to read about, thanks in
part to Sugar. Hello, Sugar, We're just going to mention
(22:55):
every like episode we work in a bloody Mary and
a brunch. Somehow, the demonization of animal fats and cholesterols
thanks to part in part in part thanks to sugar, um,
sweetbreads were perceived pretty negatively in the West, like gross
and unhealthy, and that stigma is still associated with them.
(23:15):
To some degree. Uh. And I will say my parents
they like them some liver and onions when I was
growing up, and they like they ordered out restaurants. We
never made it, but when they would order it, and
I had had friends with me, my friends later would
tell me how gross they thought that was, and I
would get embarrassed, an anxious one that like I thought
(23:38):
on a menu because I later people can be like,
there was so grouge anyway. Um. Speaking of liver, another
popularly held belief is that sinse awful like liver filter
toxins and they must be build but they're not like
I mean that that's that's not how it does. No,
(24:00):
because the liver neutralizes toxins. It doesn't like store them.
And yes, yes it's just livers aren't sweet press. But
I feel like a lot of awful and organists get
lump together, get all together. Yeah sure so, but no, no,
it's no like like your liver is not like a
repository for bad stuff. It breaks them down so that
you can clear them out. I'm making all of these gestures. Um.
(24:27):
I A lot of places we're saying that uh Organs
are often described as the most nutrient rich part of
the body, in particular with B vitamins, iron, potassium, and
a magathy fatty acids. But important caveat these are um
organs from animals not raised in confined spaces like yeah,
(24:51):
like like like normal animals not yeah, not like caged
and can't move okay, sure, Yes, And speaking of animals
and the animal kingdom, animals usually go for the organ first.
The theory being here that the animals instinctively know that
this is the most dense concentration of nutrients. Take that
(25:11):
for what you will. Yeah, I mean it makes sense.
You know sometimes the you know, the way that tasty
stuff for us is nutrient dense. That's maybe they just
go straight for the straight for the sweetbreads. Yes, the
opposite of what I like to do is save the
best for last, if we're talking about taste. But anyway,
I can't. I don't know what the animals going on
(25:33):
in their head, but yeah, do it now before the
hyena eats me? Could be? Could be? Yeah, um. Several
indigenous cultures would give women of childbearing age organ meats
to improve their strength. Yeah. Um. But and this is
a big butt. Um. This is for small amounts and
(25:55):
not too often sweetbreads consumption, yes, um, because they're not
really something you should be eating every day. They have purines,
which one broken down creates uric acid, which can cause gout.
You need to eat a lot, a lot, a lot
a lot sweetbreads for this to occur, unless you're eating
other foods that have parings at the same time. Things
(26:17):
like asparagus, mushrooms, call a flower, muscles, scallops, liver, too
much meat in general, and beer can all cause increased
uric acid production. Right, and then, uh, there's one more
thing we got to talk about. Yeah, yeah, the the okay, yeah,
zombie things. Um, it's it's not really about zombies. Um.
(26:40):
There there is one more cause for some amount of
concern about bad stuff in sweetbreads that actually holds water, um,
and that is that the famus gland is thought to
harbor high amounts of the malfunctioning protein that leads to
mad cow disease, yes depressing in somewhat frightening tangent to
call suck Um. Okay, we could probably do an entire
(27:04):
episode on the mad cow outbreak and scare of the
eighties and nineties, but let's save that one. Can we
maybe like do like milkshakes first or something anyway, top
top top level Mad cow stuff um. Mad cow disease
is a brain disease more technically known as bovine spongeform
and cephalopathy, and it is a nasty bit of work. Um.
(27:27):
The sponge of form in the name is because the
disease makes some of the brains crinkly foldy. Prions prance
being a type of protein, misfold and when this misfolding
happens in mass, it MisShapes the brain, making it look
like a sponge and this, as Egan would say, is bad.
(27:49):
It's fatal within a year. Um. So that explains the spongeform.
The bovine in bovine spongeform and cephalopathy is because the
disease appears in other species two sheep, cats, deer, and
humans for sure um. And it can be transmitted from
species to species through contact with infected tissue, including consumption
(28:11):
of brains and other specific organs including stuff like marrow
and the thymus gland oh ooops um. The whole disease
group is not deeply understood because because prions are complicated
and the incubation time and humans can be years um
(28:31):
like like decades usually um, and the infamous outbreak in
the UK was was due to infected animals being unknowingly
used in meat and bone meal that was fed widely
to livestock. And there are still fears that there may
be a spate of human spongeform en cephalopathy cases in
the future because of it. That's scary. Yeah, yep um
(28:54):
but but but governments, once they got savvy to the situation,
began to do what they could to protect the populace.
And in the United States, the UK and other places
that use this meat and bone meal is feed um.
The sale of sweetbreads and other specified bovine AFLs which
is which is actually it's an acronym specified bovine novels um.
(29:15):
The sale of all that for human consumption was temporarily banned,
and then as researchers started discovering more about the disease,
bands were put on on certain practices during slaughter that
put meat in contact with the most dangerous bits, being
the brain and the and the spinal fluid um. And
there's other legal requirements now to um. Cattle over thirty
(29:36):
months of age must be tested because the disease fully developed.
An older cat and older cattle. And so although mad
cow disease still pops up because it can happen due
to perfectly natural genetic mutations too, um, not just infection,
it's basically under control. So what I'm saying is that
eating sweetbreads will probably not net you a brain disease.
(29:57):
The thymuses that are used are taken from young cattle
not likely to have developed large amounts of those misfolding
proteins that are responsible even if they are infected, which
they probably are not. If you're in any way concerned,
you can read so much about what's being done to
prevent mad cow disease in your country. There's so much
(30:19):
out there about it. Um And and actually actually like
like I'm I'm shaky on eating brains for this reason,
For this and related reasons, there's there's a bunch of
brain diseases that I don't really want to get, and
you can get most of them by eating infected brains. Um.
But but actually researching this, uh like it It's set
off a a huge amount of fear about sweetbreads in
(30:40):
me and and then really actually soothed me. It's so
so it's like icy hot. Yeah. I was like, oh,
think that I didn't know I had to be upset about.
And then I was like, oh, I'm actually less upset
about a number of things now great, so good. Yeah, well,
I guess mad cow disease. This is a good place
(31:01):
to end on. Isn't go out? I know that's what
they say. Yep, yep, that's that's positivity. Lauren here for you,
making making everything just glow with it's her specialty, folks. Um. Yeah,
I think that's pretty much what we've got on sweep press. Um.
(31:21):
I'm excited to try them. Uh yeah, they're they're they're
they're real tasty. Okay. And to our vegetarian listeners, we
are going to do something like a vegetarian yes, yes,
sorry friends, Yeah, I mean and or you're welcome. I
mean maybe this is giving you giving you ammunition, that's
(31:45):
true to continue being vegetarian with uh either way, either way,
we will be doing something um vegetarian team soon and
uh this brings us to our listener males. Yes, a
stern mail thank you to everyone who sent him to
brunch emails. Oh yeah, we've got so many great emails
(32:07):
about brunch, really good ones. Yes, Yes, listener David wrote
in to say, having just finished listening to your episode
on brunch, and having lived in the brunch capital of
the world, New York City, I thought i'd let you
guys in on a little shift in the brunch scene
here over the past three to five years or so.
It is certainly true here that brunch is steeped in
much socio economic ickiness, but there's also a fascinating human
(32:31):
sexuality aspect taking root. Recently, on any given Sunday morning
slash afternoon, in all the most fashionable gayborhoods in Manhattan,
Hell's Kitchen, Chelsea Meatpacking, Midtown, etcetera, you can't walk half
a block without finding a drag brunch poster or sidewalk board.
Like your normal straight people brunch sarcasm intended, drag brunch
(32:52):
marries all the strangeness of brunch you so thoughtfully laid
out in the episode Oh Thank You With a drag show.
A well known city drag queen will usually host the
show with several guest performers who shaken shimmy in the
aisles and between the tables while the patrons partake of
the requisite bottomless booze and eggs in all shapes and sizes.
In truth, it's not unlike dinner theater and is a
(33:14):
highly enjoyable experience, even if some tourists stare wide eyed
and mouths to gape at what is most likely their
first interaction with a drag queen. Most often they get
a little show and a good meal before they head
off to the matinee of Wicked or Book of Mormon.
And yes, the DJ is often part of the show.
I thought you might find this an interesting tidbitt tidbit
(33:35):
on the evolution of brunch. It does offer a venue
for lesser known and up and coming drag performers to
get their name out there on a newly carved out
show day. And no queen will ever pass up a
free meal, which is often the only compensation for performing
other than a few tips here and there. That's great,
I know, I love that. Yeah, A thank you for
writing in David uh Be that there is a drag
(33:57):
branch here in Atlanta. Umps lips it's lips Um. There's
a drag venue way outside of the local gaborhoods. Actually,
but yeah, lips and it does a Southern drag brunch.
It's a it's a very I feel like every time
you say Southern. You guys can't see this, but yes,
(34:17):
this is the this is a gesture of Southern its
right here. I don't know, I don't need. That was
a terrible accent too. I apologize to everyone involved. Oh
my goodness, um, but but yeah, I didn't know that
it was a very widespread phenomenon me either. And I'm
going to New York and July and I'm determined to out. Yeah. Yeah, okay,
(34:38):
maybe we can go to Lips too. Maybe we can
make this a occurring Yeah, excellent, we should do that. Awesome.
Tanya also wrote in about brunch and brunch in Dubai,
and it's even more steroids here than I imagined. She wrote,
I'm not really sure how or when it started, but
when these boozy restaurants decided to do Friday brunch, the
(35:01):
hotels decided to kick it up a notch. Brunches are
Fridays from twelve to four pm, and buffets. It's a
fixed fee that usually has three options. The cheapest that
is just unlimited food and soft drinks slash juice, the
medium that is unlimited food and house beverages at et,
house wines, well drinks, etcetera. And the most pricey that
(35:23):
includes all of the above plus bottomless champagne. Yeah. On Friday's,
each hotel will open up the lobby or the area
that usually host the guest breakfast to brunching guests, and
each restaurant in that hotel will open and serve that
area with a brunch menu. Huh. So in one hotel brunch,
you will have access to fresh pasta from the token, Italian,
(35:46):
sushi from the token Japanese falafel, and hummas from the
toca token Middle Eastern, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. There's one
hotel and ab Dhabi that has a German restaurant, and
during their Friday brunches, the inside of the German restauran
becomes a cheese room, and one door of the restaurant
opens up to the pool area where there is a
huge grilling section with all kinds of meats and sausages.
(36:09):
So it's not just this one office building he saw,
it's literally literally every hotel in Abu Dhabi and Dubai.
As a guest, you have access to each restaurant and
can meander between them, picking and choosing what you want
to eat. These brunches get pricey, usually between one d
two dar a person. With the bottomless alcohol options, it
is very common for everyone to leave brunch completely taisted.
(36:33):
This is also because, as stata above, alcohol is not
commonly served are sold um and when it is, it's
usually expensive, so expats and locals alike take complete advantage
of bottomless drinks. When last calls announced at around three
forty is everyone rushes to the bar and orders another
few rounds to keep them going until around five PM
(36:56):
when restaurants kicks out. It's known that you don't really
plan and doing much after brunch. You are fed and
boozed enough to last you all night. There is a
hotel in Dubai minas Alam that is beautifully designed in
old Arabian market style, with canals and gondolas all around.
This hotel is one of the priciest and most extravagant
(37:16):
Friday brunches. However, given the levels of drunkenness and number
of expats that have fallen into the canals, they had
to restructure and build a certain barricades to make their
brunch safer for the intoxicated ladies and stiletto heels. I
know it sounds insane, and it usually is. It's gotten
to the point where you can't even go to a
(37:37):
hotel restaurant for Friday lunch a la carte. It's either
a Friday brunch package or a non alcohol infested restaurant.
Are just eating at home? Wow? Yes, so thank you
so much for sending that in time. That really painted
a much clearer picture for me of how how crazy
the thing is. These are how beautiful cultural notes I know.
(37:59):
And we got um several messages from listeners in Dubai
describing just how big a deal this is. And I yeah,
we enjoyed reading everyone. Thank you so much. Yeah, thank
you so much. Keep keep those emails coming. Uh, if
you'd like to send us one, you can do so
at food Stuff at how stuff works dot com. I
(38:22):
forgot the name of our show for just a milliseconds there.
It was a really cool moment. We're also on Twitter
and Instagram, Um our Twitter. Our Twitter account is at
food stuff hs W and our Instagram is simply at
food stuff Yes, so please uh connect with those there
send us an email. We've already gotten some food puns
(38:43):
from our food pun contest. Thank you, thank you, thank
you for doing us oh Man yeah, there's been some
coming in on on Instagram to well, we'll have to
compiles everything. Um. Other thanks go out to Tristan McNeil
and Noel Brown who are our audio engineers. And uh yeah,
thank you for listening. Yeah huh you can listen to
(39:04):
us again soon and we hope that in the meanwhile,
lots of good things are coming your way
Hello, and welcome to food Stuff. I'm Anyries and I'm
Lauren bulk Bom, and today we're talking about something that
we've gotten a lot of listener requests for sweetbreads. Sweetbreads. Yeah,
thanks to Lindsay Ben and Micah All for writing in
about this one. And we're talking about sweetbreads, like not
(00:29):
sweet pastry breads. Right, this is not a sweet bread
It's not a bread that is sweet, which is what
I thought sweetbreads were until last year. Not exaggerating, Yeah,
I thought on a many and I was like, I
love a pastry sen rolls in the face. I'm comforted
(00:50):
that the Internet tells me this is a common misconception
because the name is confusing. Sure, yes, yeah, and sometimes
it does refer to sweetbreads. If there's a space, If
there's space, yes, sweet spacebreads, yes, pastry Yeah, then you're
then you're in for maybe a delicious croissant. But we're
(01:10):
talking about sweetbreads as in a type of awful. That's
how you pronounce it, right, yeah, which is unfortunate, but
it comes from off All are cuts from the carcass
of an animal that are not skillful muscle and quote
fall off when the animal is butchered, and are also
(01:30):
called variety meats. Yeah, yeah, it's it's just a general
word for for for organs kind of sometimes um also
sometimes called the quinto corto in Rome a k a.
The fifth quarter of the animal, which I think is
real cute um. In Spanish, awful istas and sweetbreads are
(01:52):
sometimes referred to as molier huss um, although molier huss
can also refer to gizzards like chicken gizzer m. I
have no idea why this is. I suspect it has
to do with the shape. I think they kind of
looks similar. They do, but it's a different color anyway. Okay,
Malia has a sweetbread Mola has are particularly popular as
(02:14):
an appetizer and Argentina apparently. But yes, they are an
organ meat right, and they are most commonly from the
famous gland um. And this is sold in two usually
connected pieces, the irregularly shaped throat sweetbreads in the slightly larger,
lower fat and thus more desirable heart sweetbreads. Yes, uh,
(02:37):
similar organ, just kind of in too slightly different places.
It's it's doing the same stuff working together, right and
less commonly included in the definition of sweetbreads. It's the
pancreas are the stomach slash cut slash belly sweetbreads and
stomach sweetbreads are not highly regarded in much of the
culinary community, and it's often sometimes called the fall sweetbread
(03:01):
but they are cheaper, which might be because thymus drive.
Swetbreads begin shrinking with the animal has reached six months old,
and the pancrease sticks around. That's because the thymus is
shut off by high concentrations of sex hormones that flood
an animal's body during puberty. Why that's a great question.
I have no idea, but human thymus is work the
(03:22):
same way. Thamus is what creates and matures your lifetime
supply of T cells, which are part of your body's
immune system, and most of these are created before puberty,
and the thamus then shrinks and declines in T cell
production afterward. Anyway, now I'm thinking of Resident Evil and like,
(03:43):
just to entice you, I think we're going to come
back to Resident Evil at the end of this episode.
Oh excellent. Uh. The type of sweeprads you're most likely
to encounter on a menu or in a store are
veal sweetbreads um or vealer lamb. Really right, um, but
you can find pork as well. And according to nineteen
eleven The Grocer's Encyclopedia, quote sweetbread, the soft milky thymus,
(04:07):
glands of the young calf, and lamb, the former being
the more highly esteemed and considered one of the greatest
of all meat delicacies. And kind of going off of that, Um,
if we look at the name sweetbread, the first time
it popped up was in a sixteenth century book. And
there's a lot of Old English here with like extra
(04:29):
ease and stuff. So I'm going to try to not
miss this. Where's Jonathan Strickland when you need him? Oh?
I know, we should have bought him in anyway, the
book is called The History i e. Of Man and
quote a certain glandulous part called thymus, which in calis
cows cows. Oh okay, it's spelled c a l u
(04:54):
e s calves calves, not cows calves. Makes way more sense. Okay, continue, Sorry,
Lauren and Annie bungle through Old English. The sweetbread episode
that's actually a really good type, um, is most pleasant
to be eaten. I suppose we call it the sweet
(05:15):
bread end quote. So one theory is that sweetbread might
be referring to the fact that thamus meat is relatively
sweeter than other meats. I guess, and bread could come
from the Old English bread b r e d e,
meaning roasted meats are flesh or bread as in another
(05:35):
word for morsel, because they kind of look like perhaps
because the name, most people are confused about what sweetbreads
are like we alluded to even chefs they came from,
and they also very probably don't want to know. Yeah,
there's a there's a perception in in a lot of
modern Western thought that that awful is awful, man, it's
(05:59):
tasty more and that later providing extra complication to the term. Um.
You've also got the words sweet meats kicking around, which
generally means a sugared confection but is occasionally used to
mean sweetbread. So they're not meats. They're not like candied bacon. No, well,
I guess it could be because candied bacon could be
(06:19):
a sugared confection. Usually just means like a like like
a small like like pastry, or like a like a
like a or something like that. Yeah, okay, yeah, like
a piece of candy. Just want sweetmeat. Sometimes he used
to mean sweetbread. The origin of sweetmeat lies in the
Old English circa tenth century c E. When the word
(06:43):
meat M E t e simply meant food. The narrower
definition of meat being like animal flesh that we consume
um didn't pop up until around thirteen hundred, So when
it was first used, sweetmeat meant just a sweet food. Wow,
the evolution of language. Oh, it's really great. I really
(07:04):
want to do that etymology show sometimes maybe someday, Lauren,
maybe maybe someday. So to prepare sweetbreads, and this is uh.
Annie read a lot of research about this, has never
done it herself. I've never done myself either. All right,
but we're in this together. But but but this is
a this is the tried and true method from many sources.
(07:25):
You first want to remove any impurities by soaking them,
usually in cold and I read in some places salted water, water,
but sometimes milk or butter milk, anywhere from three to
twenty four hours. And according to what I read, it's
a good idea to change out that milk or water
whatever you're soaking in a couple of times. That also
helps out loosen up the membrane around the actual flesh
(07:46):
that you want to consume, and um, then you blanche
go back and revisit that favorite thing is my absolute favorite,
that is sarcasm. And then you do that by putting
it in a cold pot of cold water or chicken stock,
bringing it to a boil, simmering for about five minutes,
(08:07):
and then chilling rapidly by placing a nice water. UM.
So this doesn't cook them, but it firms them up
and makes um. Removing what I frequently referred to as
the quote grizzly bits easier, which has the next step
And it sounds like it's pretty tricky um and or
just sort of gross yep. Um. Once it's cool enough
(08:30):
to handle, you do your best to remove the veins,
the fat, the s new, the gristle, and sometimes the membrane,
depending on the recipe. Um. And you can use a
knife or your very own fingers. And you want to
keep the sweetmeat. It's not not sweetmeat sweetbread sweetbreads, confusing myself.
(08:53):
You want to keep them whole and enlarger clumps. And
after this, a lot of chefs like to chill and
press the meat into it even think that's a preference thing.
And actually so it's the blanching. Um. But that being
a preference is relatively new. Some people think it's more
tender if you don't blanch. Yeah, if you haven't, if
(09:13):
you haven't ever seen uh sweetbreads, they're sort of this
like this like clumpy, massive clump stuff. Clump clump stuff.
That's an off branch show. Maybe we'll have a segments.
It sounds like a lumpy space princess show on how
(09:33):
stuff works. Anyway, once you have prepared done this like
preparation step to cook them, you can grill them, braise them,
or fry them. Those are the most common ways. But
they can't be poached, are bo broiled, almost boiled, And
(09:54):
I was like, wait a minute, no, Apparently they're very
difficult to overcook. So it's forgiving food to try. Um.
And they can cook for several minutes without getting tough. Yeah,
and they remain moist. Oh all right. Um. If you
look at traditional French and Italian recipes, uh, you can
often find them served in rich creamy sauces. Add richness
(10:18):
to a rich food share that's your French an Italian way. Yeah,
it is um and I think hearkening back to our
cauliflower episode, there was an uber rinch rich French cauliflower
recipe that involved sweetbreads. Yes, I still want to eat that.
It did sound good. Uh. And today you'll likely find
them paired with something sour or acidic or both, probably
(10:43):
the same thing, almost to compliment the richness of the meat,
like lemons or capers alongside bacon. I saw bacon a lot,
and vegetables like beans are peas or they can be
more of a supporting character to something like patte or sausage. Sure. Yeah,
that's the throughout history. Like like people just cook them
any which way they want to. Yeah. Um. And once
(11:06):
they've been cooked, what do they taste like? Uh? As
we're recording this, I have no idea, but the things
I read, I saw a lot of tender, rich, creamy, smooth,
and I can attest to this. Um, I've had sweetbreads there. Um.
Have you ever had like a like a liver patte? Yes? Okay,
so sweetbreads are like a slightly firmer like ready made
(11:30):
liver patte, Like it's just an organ hanging out in
an animal that's sort of tastes like liver patte. Um,
they're like a slightly sweet meat butter. Oh, like a meatcake.
I'm not I'm not sure if the words I'm saying
are making it sound more or less appetizing. And the
flavor is is really delicate, though compared with with liver Um,
(11:51):
it doesn't have this sort of like metallic or gamey
twinge that you get from liver um and and some
other kinds of awful. Um. If you've never had patta
out there in a podcast land um, okay, Like if
you've ever had a flowerless chocolate cake, like one that's
like really like like like rich and dense and creamy
(12:11):
and kind of like fine grained on the tongue, um
the text or something like that. And the taste is
a little bit like the char on the outside of
a grilled steak, but without the char flavor, Like it's
just sort of like sweet and meaty, okay, like it.
That's the best way that I can think of to
describe It's it's a very it's a very individual profiled flavor,
(12:35):
So that was an excellent way to describe it, because
I'm generally like it was salty. I'm terrible at describing taste,
so my hat goes off to you, Thank you, thank you.
We will be going to Did you try some sweetbreads
at a place in Atlanta that has some called Holman infintion? Yeah?
(12:56):
Possibly before this episode airs time travel, I know podcasting
and publication schedules. I'm telling you. Um, sweetbreads are often
called the least awful tasting of awfuls, and this apparently
means less musty. Sure, musty is a good word for that,
for that metallic um gaming flavor that I was describing earlier.
(13:20):
Share Okay, I was thinking, like an old coat. That's terrible.
So sweetbreads are a good place to start your awful
journey if that is a thing you're looking to embark on.
I'm loving all the double meanings this is having. Now.
Hominems are the best they are if you want to
(13:41):
go on this journey, though it could be very expensive homophones,
I got that wrong, anyway, Go ahead, Yes, expensive journey. Yes.
Sweetbreads can range from seven dollars to sixteen dollars a pound,
which is a newish thing in our recent times because
they used to be very difficult thing to sell and
they go bad very quickly. So plan to cook dotty
soon after buying and most things I said, mind cook
(14:02):
the same day, And now I I don't know if
I'm prepared to. I really don't like preparing meat. I don't.
I don't know if I'm prepared to go out and
find sweetbreads and cook them at home. I have no problem.
I have no problem for preparing meat. Maybe maybe I'll
run the camera on that one. Okay, that's fine with me.
I'm sure nothing disasters will happen. Speaking of disasters, Uh no, no,
(14:27):
not speaking of disasters. But let's let's let's dig into,
um into how this entire eating this strange gland from
animals thing started started happening in human culture. But first
let's take a quick break for a word from our sponsor,
(14:51):
and we're back. Thank you sponsor, Yes, thank you sponsor.
So when exactly did this become a thing? Probably since
humans started hunting animals. Yeah, but infection. Next, throughout most
of our history, we haven't had refrigeration again, frozen food. Um,
(15:13):
and when humans had to butcher their own animals, you
didn't want to waste any of that hard work or
any of the animal so so yeah, so just eat
it it's there, find a way to make it good.
According to the book odd Bits, which is a great book, um,
these and other highly perishable organs were eaten in many
cultures by either the hunters themselves um a kind of
(15:35):
as a reward because they're tasty for their hard work,
or be because they were just the first person who
had access to them. They're going to go bad, go
on and eat it um. Or they were saved for
and for an esteemed group elder oh and uh. And
later they were probably saved and served to royalty when
the butchery happened. UM. As we said earlier, the first
(16:00):
that the first use of the term sweetbreads appeared around
the fifteen hundreds. Around that time, there was a recipe
from Italy that recommended um using veal or or goat
like like kids sweetbreads to make this kind of eggy
pottage that was seasoned interestingly with rosewater, saffron, ginger, cinnamon,
and sugar. Very fancy, yeah, very fancy pottage. Pottage sort
(16:27):
of like a very richly seasoned meat egg stew soufla thing.
If I just keep saying food words, isn't going to
make more sense Eventually? Maybe I also thought of pottage
was a pot of dessert. So I've been wrong about
(16:48):
many things. Sweetbreads, We've been wrong about many things. That's
also a good episode title. There we go. We have
a lot of contenders, a lot of strong contenders. A
lot of recipes around this time were crafted around sweetbreads,
which were viewed by the eighteenth nineteenth century Europeans as nutritious.
(17:09):
We'll examine that, claiming a bit um, thrifty and easy
to come by. This is very different than what it
is now. Yeah. Yeah, Also they like to taste, and
this time was the height of their popularity. The nineteenth
centuries their moment in the sun. So many meat dishes
were served with sweetbreads as a garnish huh yeah um,
(17:34):
and sweetbreads began to fall out of fashion towards the
end of the eighteenth century, with the introduction of industrialized farming, refrigeration,
grocery stores, and the removal of most consumers from the
process behind how their food got to their table, i e.
Not Between our own animals, right, and all of these
(17:56):
innovations drove down the price of me and made it
more readily available, but mass scale production didn't really allow
for the tricky process of getting awful and keeping it
intact and storing it intact and packaging, shipping and selling
it before it went bad. Um, and it just wasn't
cost effective for them, so they didn't want to do
it anymore. And as butcher's shops closed to make way
(18:19):
for these lower cost grocery stores, we lost a lot
of our knowledge of how to like buy and cook
rare types of meat as well. Sure. Um, this this
industrialization process is also what began to lead to um
to to awful and and bones from meat being um
processed and used as feed in livestock, which is another
(18:43):
thing we'll come back to in a few minutes. Um.
They've always been pretty consistently featured on French menus, though
particularly Read the Vote or Reveal sweetbreads and uh French
inspired cookbooks like The Joy of Cooking, of which was
first published in which I always forget about it seems
like such a modern cook bit to me anyway. Um.
(19:03):
The Joy of Cooking and also Julia Child's recipes from
the sixties on have have continued to feature sweetbreads. Yeah yeah, um.
They're also ground up in dog food and cat food,
and they's sometimes been used in meat based baby food. Um.
And yet definitely um have been part of the that
meat and bone meal that's used as animal feed on farms. Um.
(19:24):
Modern regulations in some areas outlaw that because of transmittable
brain diseases, which I'm betting you didn't think was a
sentence you'd here in this episode, and which I'll talk
more about in a depressing and slightly frightening tangent at
the end. And I'll make another resident evil reference. Awful
(19:46):
became all the rage once again and of scale restaurants
in the ninety nineties, but it fell away again towards
the end of the decade. And a note about the
popularity of the dish in the late nineties. Okay, so
sweetbreads are a major up point in the Hannibal Lecter
film Red Dragon, which is the prequel to Silence of
the Lambs, because his removal of a human thimus gland
(20:06):
from a victim and his notation on the I wasn't
paying attention when you said it a second ago. The
sweetbread entry the read de vous um and in his
copy of the French Encyclopedia of Cooking uh loose gastronomy Um.
That event leads an investigator to capture him, which is
(20:28):
why he's in prison. At the beginning of Silence of
the Lambs. Yeah, I do seem to recall that it's
all the sweetbreads. It's all the sweetbreads, um. But that
aside aside um. I think I think that that sweetbreads
United States popularity didn't so much fall away as like
kind of like justest state and morphed slowly into the
(20:51):
nose to tail movement, which which, if you will recall,
was was skipping merrily hand in hand with the farm
to table movement um throughout the late odds and early teens,
leading us to sweet breads are making a come back. Yeah,
don't call it a comeback right now, and not just
enough scale restaurants, um. And that's yeah. And part thinks
(21:12):
this idea that we shouldn't be wasting so much food
or killing an animals for certain pieces, although I did
read like a critique of that point of view is
that we aren't really wasting it because it is getting
used in dog food and cat food, and sweetbreads were
included on the Daily Meals Top food Trends. Yeah, I
(21:33):
definitely I feel that I've been seeing them more often,
But I do think it's like a rotating thing. It's hard.
It was hard for me to think of a menu
that I knew would have them, no matter what, if
you know what I mean, Like, I feel like they
pop up sometimes on menus. Yeah, it's also a freshness
issue because I mean, you know, it depends on because
they are taken from very young calves um or or
(21:56):
other livestock. And so the season in which there are
a whole bunch of very young livestock animals is a
particular season. Yeah, makes sense. Alright, So that brings us
to the end of our history segment. Yes, yes, when
we get back from this another short ad break, we
will discuss health and yes, so stick correct and we're back,
(22:34):
Thank you sponsor. So sweetbreads health, What's what's the deal there? Um?
It was actually really interesting to read about, thanks in
part to Sugar. Hello, Sugar, We're just going to mention
(22:55):
every like episode we work in a bloody Mary and
a brunch. Somehow, the demonization of animal fats and cholesterols
thanks to part in part in part thanks to sugar, um,
sweetbreads were perceived pretty negatively in the West, like gross
and unhealthy, and that stigma is still associated with them.
(23:15):
To some degree. Uh. And I will say my parents
they like them some liver and onions when I was
growing up, and they like they ordered out restaurants. We
never made it, but when they would order it, and
I had had friends with me, my friends later would
tell me how gross they thought that was, and I
would get embarrassed, an anxious one that like I thought
(23:38):
on a menu because I later people can be like,
there was so grouge anyway. Um. Speaking of liver, another
popularly held belief is that sinse awful like liver filter
toxins and they must be build but they're not like
I mean that that's that's not how it does. No,
(24:00):
because the liver neutralizes toxins. It doesn't like store them.
And yes, yes it's just livers aren't sweet press. But
I feel like a lot of awful and organists get
lump together, get all together. Yeah sure so, but no, no,
it's no like like your liver is not like a
repository for bad stuff. It breaks them down so that
you can clear them out. I'm making all of these gestures. Um.
(24:27):
I A lot of places we're saying that uh Organs
are often described as the most nutrient rich part of
the body, in particular with B vitamins, iron, potassium, and
a magathy fatty acids. But important caveat these are um
organs from animals not raised in confined spaces like yeah,
(24:51):
like like like normal animals not yeah, not like caged
and can't move okay, sure, Yes, And speaking of animals
and the animal kingdom, animals usually go for the organ first.
The theory being here that the animals instinctively know that
this is the most dense concentration of nutrients. Take that
(25:11):
for what you will. Yeah, I mean it makes sense.
You know sometimes the you know, the way that tasty
stuff for us is nutrient dense. That's maybe they just
go straight for the straight for the sweetbreads. Yes, the
opposite of what I like to do is save the
best for last, if we're talking about taste. But anyway,
I can't. I don't know what the animals going on
(25:33):
in their head, but yeah, do it now before the
hyena eats me? Could be? Could be? Yeah, um. Several
indigenous cultures would give women of childbearing age organ meats
to improve their strength. Yeah. Um. But and this is
a big butt. Um. This is for small amounts and
(25:55):
not too often sweetbreads consumption, yes, um, because they're not
really something you should be eating every day. They have purines,
which one broken down creates uric acid, which can cause gout.
You need to eat a lot, a lot, a lot
a lot sweetbreads for this to occur, unless you're eating
other foods that have parings at the same time. Things
(26:17):
like asparagus, mushrooms, call a flower, muscles, scallops, liver, too
much meat in general, and beer can all cause increased
uric acid production. Right, and then, uh, there's one more
thing we got to talk about. Yeah, yeah, the the okay, yeah,
zombie things. Um, it's it's not really about zombies. Um.
(26:40):
There there is one more cause for some amount of
concern about bad stuff in sweetbreads that actually holds water, um,
and that is that the famus gland is thought to
harbor high amounts of the malfunctioning protein that leads to
mad cow disease, yes depressing in somewhat frightening tangent to
call suck Um. Okay, we could probably do an entire
(27:04):
episode on the mad cow outbreak and scare of the
eighties and nineties, but let's save that one. Can we
maybe like do like milkshakes first or something anyway, top
top top level Mad cow stuff um. Mad cow disease
is a brain disease more technically known as bovine spongeform
and cephalopathy, and it is a nasty bit of work. Um.
(27:27):
The sponge of form in the name is because the
disease makes some of the brains crinkly foldy. Prions prance
being a type of protein, misfold and when this misfolding
happens in mass, it MisShapes the brain, making it look
like a sponge and this, as Egan would say, is bad.
(27:49):
It's fatal within a year. Um. So that explains the spongeform.
The bovine in bovine spongeform and cephalopathy is because the
disease appears in other species two sheep, cats, deer, and
humans for sure um. And it can be transmitted from
species to species through contact with infected tissue, including consumption
(28:11):
of brains and other specific organs including stuff like marrow
and the thymus gland oh ooops um. The whole disease
group is not deeply understood because because prions are complicated
and the incubation time and humans can be years um
(28:31):
like like decades usually um, and the infamous outbreak in
the UK was was due to infected animals being unknowingly
used in meat and bone meal that was fed widely
to livestock. And there are still fears that there may
be a spate of human spongeform en cephalopathy cases in
the future because of it. That's scary. Yeah, yep um
(28:54):
but but but governments, once they got savvy to the situation,
began to do what they could to protect the populace.
And in the United States, the UK and other places
that use this meat and bone meal is feed um.
The sale of sweetbreads and other specified bovine AFLs which
is which is actually it's an acronym specified bovine novels um.
(29:15):
The sale of all that for human consumption was temporarily banned,
and then as researchers started discovering more about the disease,
bands were put on on certain practices during slaughter that
put meat in contact with the most dangerous bits, being
the brain and the and the spinal fluid um. And
there's other legal requirements now to um. Cattle over thirty
(29:36):
months of age must be tested because the disease fully developed.
An older cat and older cattle. And so although mad
cow disease still pops up because it can happen due
to perfectly natural genetic mutations too, um, not just infection,
it's basically under control. So what I'm saying is that
eating sweetbreads will probably not net you a brain disease.
(29:57):
The thymuses that are used are taken from young cattle
not likely to have developed large amounts of those misfolding
proteins that are responsible even if they are infected, which
they probably are not. If you're in any way concerned,
you can read so much about what's being done to
prevent mad cow disease in your country. There's so much
(30:19):
out there about it. Um And and actually actually like
like I'm I'm shaky on eating brains for this reason,
For this and related reasons, there's there's a bunch of
brain diseases that I don't really want to get, and
you can get most of them by eating infected brains. Um.
But but actually researching this, uh like it It's set
off a a huge amount of fear about sweetbreads in
(30:40):
me and and then really actually soothed me. It's so
so it's like icy hot. Yeah. I was like, oh,
think that I didn't know I had to be upset about.
And then I was like, oh, I'm actually less upset
about a number of things now great, so good. Yeah, well,
I guess mad cow disease. This is a good place
(31:01):
to end on. Isn't go out? I know that's what
they say. Yep, yep, that's that's positivity. Lauren here for you,
making making everything just glow with it's her specialty, folks. Um. Yeah,
I think that's pretty much what we've got on sweep press. Um.
(31:21):
I'm excited to try them. Uh yeah, they're they're they're
they're real tasty. Okay. And to our vegetarian listeners, we
are going to do something like a vegetarian yes, yes,
sorry friends, Yeah, I mean and or you're welcome. I
mean maybe this is giving you giving you ammunition, that's
(31:45):
true to continue being vegetarian with uh either way, either way,
we will be doing something um vegetarian team soon and
uh this brings us to our listener males. Yes, a
stern mail thank you to everyone who sent him to
brunch emails. Oh yeah, we've got so many great emails
(32:07):
about brunch, really good ones. Yes, Yes, listener David wrote
in to say, having just finished listening to your episode
on brunch, and having lived in the brunch capital of
the world, New York City, I thought i'd let you
guys in on a little shift in the brunch scene
here over the past three to five years or so.
It is certainly true here that brunch is steeped in
much socio economic ickiness, but there's also a fascinating human
(32:31):
sexuality aspect taking root. Recently, on any given Sunday morning
slash afternoon, in all the most fashionable gayborhoods in Manhattan,
Hell's Kitchen, Chelsea Meatpacking, Midtown, etcetera, you can't walk half
a block without finding a drag brunch poster or sidewalk board.
Like your normal straight people brunch sarcasm intended, drag brunch
(32:52):
marries all the strangeness of brunch you so thoughtfully laid
out in the episode Oh Thank You With a drag show.
A well known city drag queen will usually host the
show with several guest performers who shaken shimmy in the
aisles and between the tables while the patrons partake of
the requisite bottomless booze and eggs in all shapes and sizes.
In truth, it's not unlike dinner theater and is a
(33:14):
highly enjoyable experience, even if some tourists stare wide eyed
and mouths to gape at what is most likely their
first interaction with a drag queen. Most often they get
a little show and a good meal before they head
off to the matinee of Wicked or Book of Mormon.
And yes, the DJ is often part of the show.
I thought you might find this an interesting tidbitt tidbit
(33:35):
on the evolution of brunch. It does offer a venue
for lesser known and up and coming drag performers to
get their name out there on a newly carved out
show day. And no queen will ever pass up a
free meal, which is often the only compensation for performing
other than a few tips here and there. That's great,
I know, I love that. Yeah, A thank you for
writing in David uh Be that there is a drag
(33:57):
branch here in Atlanta. Umps lips it's lips Um. There's
a drag venue way outside of the local gaborhoods. Actually,
but yeah, lips and it does a Southern drag brunch.
It's a it's a very I feel like every time
you say Southern. You guys can't see this, but yes,
(34:17):
this is the this is a gesture of Southern its
right here. I don't know, I don't need. That was
a terrible accent too. I apologize to everyone involved. Oh
my goodness, um, but but yeah, I didn't know that
it was a very widespread phenomenon me either. And I'm
going to New York and July and I'm determined to out. Yeah. Yeah, okay,
(34:38):
maybe we can go to Lips too. Maybe we can
make this a occurring Yeah, excellent, we should do that. Awesome.
Tanya also wrote in about brunch and brunch in Dubai,
and it's even more steroids here than I imagined. She wrote,
I'm not really sure how or when it started, but
when these boozy restaurants decided to do Friday brunch, the
(35:01):
hotels decided to kick it up a notch. Brunches are
Fridays from twelve to four pm, and buffets. It's a
fixed fee that usually has three options. The cheapest that
is just unlimited food and soft drinks slash juice, the
medium that is unlimited food and house beverages at et,
house wines, well drinks, etcetera. And the most pricey that
(35:23):
includes all of the above plus bottomless champagne. Yeah. On Friday's,
each hotel will open up the lobby or the area
that usually host the guest breakfast to brunching guests, and
each restaurant in that hotel will open and serve that
area with a brunch menu. Huh. So in one hotel brunch,
you will have access to fresh pasta from the token, Italian,
(35:46):
sushi from the token Japanese falafel, and hummas from the
toca token Middle Eastern, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. There's one
hotel and ab Dhabi that has a German restaurant, and
during their Friday brunches, the inside of the German restauran
becomes a cheese room, and one door of the restaurant
opens up to the pool area where there is a
huge grilling section with all kinds of meats and sausages.
(36:09):
So it's not just this one office building he saw,
it's literally literally every hotel in Abu Dhabi and Dubai.
As a guest, you have access to each restaurant and
can meander between them, picking and choosing what you want
to eat. These brunches get pricey, usually between one d
two dar a person. With the bottomless alcohol options, it
is very common for everyone to leave brunch completely taisted.
(36:33):
This is also because, as stata above, alcohol is not
commonly served are sold um and when it is, it's
usually expensive, so expats and locals alike take complete advantage
of bottomless drinks. When last calls announced at around three
forty is everyone rushes to the bar and orders another
few rounds to keep them going until around five PM
(36:56):
when restaurants kicks out. It's known that you don't really
plan and doing much after brunch. You are fed and
boozed enough to last you all night. There is a
hotel in Dubai minas Alam that is beautifully designed in
old Arabian market style, with canals and gondolas all around.
This hotel is one of the priciest and most extravagant
(37:16):
Friday brunches. However, given the levels of drunkenness and number
of expats that have fallen into the canals, they had
to restructure and build a certain barricades to make their
brunch safer for the intoxicated ladies and stiletto heels. I
know it sounds insane, and it usually is. It's gotten
to the point where you can't even go to a
(37:37):
hotel restaurant for Friday lunch a la carte. It's either
a Friday brunch package or a non alcohol infested restaurant.
Are just eating at home? Wow? Yes, so thank you
so much for sending that in time. That really painted
a much clearer picture for me of how how crazy
the thing is. These are how beautiful cultural notes I know.
(37:59):
And we got um several messages from listeners in Dubai
describing just how big a deal this is. And I yeah,
we enjoyed reading everyone. Thank you so much. Yeah, thank
you so much. Keep keep those emails coming. Uh, if
you'd like to send us one, you can do so
at food Stuff at how stuff works dot com. I
(38:22):
forgot the name of our show for just a milliseconds there.
It was a really cool moment. We're also on Twitter
and Instagram, Um our Twitter. Our Twitter account is at
food stuff hs W and our Instagram is simply at
food stuff Yes, so please uh connect with those there
send us an email. We've already gotten some food puns
(38:43):
from our food pun contest. Thank you, thank you, thank
you for doing us oh Man yeah, there's been some
coming in on on Instagram to well, we'll have to
compiles everything. Um. Other thanks go out to Tristan McNeil
and Noel Brown who are our audio engineers. And uh yeah,
thank you for listening. Yeah huh you can listen to
(39:04):
us again soon and we hope that in the meanwhile,
lots of good things are coming your way
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