Until just recently I'd had the erroneous impression that when one ordered sweetbreads, it was generally a plural thing. Several little ones, like chicken nuggets, as several chefs have affectionately described them to me over the years. Turns out I'd been thinking only of the thymus or "throat" sweetbread, not of the similarly named but rather larger pancreas or "heart" sweetbread.
Odd that one almost never sees the distinction made on menus. Perhaps the unconcious logic of this is that sweetbreads are more appealing the less diners know about their origins.
Anyway, as pictured above, it is the pancreas they serve at 5ème vegetarian-unfriendly restaurant Christophe. A particularly large one at that. When it hit the table the other night I actually gasped, thinking I'd been served some kind of primordial Pangea sweetbread sourced from the neck of Babe the Blue Ox, or something.
