Sweetbreads: culinary term for the pancreas or thymus. However a lot of people (myself included) still think sweetbreads are testicles. I mean its al OM NOM NOM NOM as far as I am concerned, and once prepared I am not sure I could necessarily taste the difference, even with a Sainsbury’s Taste The Difference “Sweetbread Platter”. But the culinary term for testicles is sometime sweetmeats. Though actually since testicles ad/or sweetmeats rarely show up in British cookery, we are better off learning the international culinary term for bollocks namely Animelles.
Wikibooks has the best definition I have ever seen:
Sweetmeat is the culinary name for testicles. Despite the name, sweetmeat is not sweet and is usually not considered to be meat.
Sweetmeats are also another name for sweets though, and often applied to Turkish or Indian sweets, which are also not considered to be meat though are often cloyingly sweet. And not bollocks.
However the Rocky Mountain Oyster is bull.boar or bufallo bollocks, and if it ever appears on the menu always remember how far away from the sea you are before ordering the oysters. If you want to buy, try McReynolds Farms (only in the US unfortunately). Source of the lovely vaumn packed meaty looking bugger above. They don’t come cheap though. (Wellm these days they don’t come at all…)
But just in case you find yourself with a glut of testicles, here’s a recipe:
Animelles de Moutons Frites
‘Choose 3 fresh sheep’s (mutton) animelles, remove the skin and cut each into 8 pieces of uniform size. Put into an earthenware bowl with salt, pepper, 2 teaspoons tarragon vinegar, 2 teaspoons olive oil, a little thyme, 1/2 bay leaf, 1 sliced onion and a few sprigs of parsley. Cover the bowl. After one hour they should give out their liquid. Drain, put back into the bowl with the rest of the ingredients, and sprinkle with the juice of half a lemon. Before serving, drain on a cloth, pressing lightly; dredge with flour and fry until golden. Arrange in a heap on a napkin and garnish with fried parsley.’