Important: Safety Warning
This recipe calls for animal brains or related nervous-system tissue. Cattle brain and spinal tissue can transmit bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), the cause of variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease in humans, which is fatal and has no treatment.
This information has been left in for historical purposes but should not be acted upon.
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OX BRAINS (en Matelote)
Take half a dozen button-onions, put them whole into a stewpan with an ounce and a half of fresh butter, and move them about until they are soft and yellow. Dredge a dessert-spoonful of flour over them, and moisten with nearly half a pint of good stock and a glassful of red wine. Add a few sprigs of parsley, a sprig of winter savoury, a bay-leaf, a tea-spoonful of salt, half a salt-spoonful of cayenne, half a blade of mace, and three or four small mushrooms if they are at hand. Simmer the sauce gently for half an hour. Clean the ox brains very carefully, and remove all the skin and fibrous parts. Lay them in lukewarm water to soak, then take them up and drain them, put them into the sauce, and let them simmer gently for half an hour. Serve on a hot dish; remove the herbs from the sauce, and pour it upon the brains. Probable cost, exclusive of the wine, 1s. 6d. Sufficient for two or three persons.
This dish cannot be prepared safely today, and the reason is the main ingredient rather than the method. The notes below explain the specific hazard and the regulatory position.
- The hazard is prion diseaseBovine brain and spinal cord are the tissues that carry the infectious agent of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), which is linked to variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease in humans. The disease is invariably fatal and there is no treatment.
- Cooking does not helpPrions are misfolded proteins, not bacteria. They survive ordinary cooking, and survive autoclaving conditions far beyond anything a kitchen can produce, so the half-hour simmer here offers no protection whatever.
- It is not simply a matter of sourcingIt is not simply a matter of sourcing he 1980s and 1990s BSE crisis, the skull including the brain, and the spinal cord, of cattle above a specified age have been classed as specified risk material in the UK and the EU, and must be removed from the carcass and destroyed rather than sold for food; comparable controls exist in a number of other countries. In those jurisdictions a butcher cannot lawfully supply the central ingredient.
- Other brains are not a substituteDo not read this as an invitation to swap in another animal's brain. Sheep and goats have their own transmissible spongiform encephalopathy, and their brain and spinal tissue are likewise restricted in many jurisdictions.
- If you want the sauceThe matelote base here — button onions sweated in butter, flour, stock, red wine, parsley, savoury, bay and mace — is a conventional Victorian brown wine sauce and belongs to a long tradition. Use a current recipe for a dish to serve it with, and leave the brains out of it entirely.
- Reading the original figuresReading the original figures ecipe calls for 'nearly half a pint' of stock; a British half-pint is 10 imperial fluid ounces, roughly 1 1/4 US cups.