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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Brain Croquettes
Wash the brains of three heads very thoroughly, until they are free from membraneous matter and perfectly white. Then scramble with three eggs. When cold, roll into egg-shaped balls, with floured hands; dip in beaten egg, then in cracker o stale bread crumbs, and fry in lard.--Mrs. R.L.
This is a straightforward nineteenth-century offal preparation, but the central ingredient is one that most of the world removed from the food supply in the 1990s. The notes below explain the problem rather than adapting the method.
- Why the brains are the issueBovine brain and spinal cord are classified as specified risk material because they can carry the prions responsible for BSE and its human form, variant CJD. In the United States, EU and UK, brain and skull from cattle over a set age are prohibited from entering the food chain.
- Cooking does not helpPrions are proteins, not microbes. They survive frying, boiling, autoclaving and the temperatures reachable in any kitchen, so no revised time or temperature makes this dish safe.
- "Three heads" is not a butcher's order todayThe recipe assumes whole heads came home from slaughter, brains included. Under current rules the brain of older cattle is removed and destroyed as regulated waste, and sourcing beef brains in the quantity called for here is difficult or prohibited in many countries.
- Other brains are not a substituteSheep are subject to scrapie, another prion disease, and are restricted similarly in many places. Pork brains are sold canned in some US markets but carry their own regulatory and nutritional caveats, and this recipe was not written for them.
- If you want the dishCroquettes of this shape and coating were also made with chicken, sweetbreads or leftover veal. Use a current recipe for one of those rather than trying to adjust this one.
- For reading, not cookingOne point of period vocabulary: "scramble with three eggs" means cooking the washed brains into a soft egg mixture and letting it set cold before shaping.
Housekeeping in Old Virginia, compiled by Marion Cabell Tyree and published in 1877, gathers contributions from some 250 Virginia housewives, most of them credited only by initials as "Mrs. R.L." is here. Brains were a routine part of that economy: the head came home with the rest of the beast, and the brains were cooked along with everything else it yielded. Scrambling the brains and then shaping them into crumbed and fried croquettes are consecutive steps of a single preparation, and the croquette itself was fashionable in American cookbooks of the 1870s and 80s as a genteel French-sounding way to serve up anything left over. The dish persisted in Southern and Midwestern cooking well into the twentieth century, and brain sandwiches remain a regional specialty along the Ohio River, now made with pork brains.