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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Calf's Brains in Scallop Shells
After boiling two brains, cut them into dice, season well, and put them into a basin. Gradually reduce two or three tablespoonfuls of bechamel sauce in a saucepan, and add two tablespoonfuls of melted glaze. When it is cooked to a nice cream, add four tablespoonfuls of cooked sweet herbs, cook the mixture for two or three minutes, then add the brains, and take the pan off the fire. Have ready eight or nine well-cleaned scallop shells, fill them with the mixture, sprinkle over some grated Parmesan cheese, and glaze. Serve hot. Calf's Brains, Poulette Style Put a large piece of butter in a saucepan, and after melting it gradually add one teacupful of flour, mix well together and add one teacupful of clear broth, taking care to stir well all the time, then add about half a gill of white or Madeira wine and water in equal parts. Next add a few small onions and mushrooms and boil until they are done, adding a little grated nutmeg and salt and pepper according to the taste; when these are soft put in the brains and boil again for twelve or fifteen minutes; take out the brains and put them on a dish, add the yolk of an egg and the juice of a lemon to the sauce and pour it over the brains. The dish must be served very hot. Calf's Brains with Black or Brown Butter After cleaning, blanching and preparing take three calf's brains, put them in a stewpan and cover over with water, add two or three pinches of salt, one-half breakfast cupful of vinegar, one medium-sized sliced carrot, one sprig of thyme, one bay leaf and a dozen whole peppers; boil for five minutes, drain thoroughly and cut each brain into halves. Arrange on a dish, and serve with one gill of very hot black or brown butter.
Braised Breast of Veal, Milanese Style Bone a breast of veal weighing about two and one-half pounds, and season with one tablespoonful of salt and one teaspoonful of pepper. Stuff it in the usual way with forcemeat, roll and tie it, making a few incisions in the skin. Put it into a braising-pan with a sliced carrot and onion, and braise it for an hour and a half, basting it now and then with its own gravy. Serve with one pint of hot Milanese garnishing on a dish, placing the meat on top, and straining the gravy over it.
Breast of Veal, Poulette Cut a breast of veal into small equal-sized pieces, blanch, put them in a saucepan with a small quantity of the water in which they were parboiled and warm them over the fire. Sift in a small quantity of flour, stir it until smooth, then put in a lump of butter, some mushrooms, carrots, bay leaves, a bunch of sweet herbs and salt and pepper to taste. Place the lid on the saucepan and cook the contents gradually until nearly done, then put in some young white onions and fish cooking. When done place the pieces of veal on a hot dish and keep it near the fire while the sauce is being prepared. Strain the cooking liquor through a fine hair sieve into another saucepan, squeeze in a small quantity of lemon juice and then pour in the beaten yolks of four eggs; stir it over the fire until thick, not allowing it to boil, then pour it over the veal, and serve.
A run of four veal preparations from Oscar's veal chapter, written for a professional brigade that had stock, glaze and bechamel standing ready. A few of the quantities and timings need scrutiny before you cook from them.
- Sourcing brainsBovine brain and spinal cord are classed as specified risk material in many countries because of BSE, and the rules differ by jurisdiction and by the age of the animal. Buy only from a licensed butcher who can confirm the material is legal for sale where you are; in some places calf's brains simply are not available.
- What "after boiling" leaves outBrains need an hour or two of soaking in several changes of cold water, then careful peeling of the outer membrane and blood vessels, before they are poached — never hard-boiled — in an acidulated court bouillon at a bare shiver, 15 to 20 minutes. The third recipe here spells the aromatics out; the first two assume you already know.
- Glaze"Melted glaze" is glace de viande: veal stock reduced to a syrup that sets solid when cold. Commercial demi-glace concentrate is the practical stand-in, used sparingly, as it is very salty.
- Cooked sweet herbsNot a modern term. In this period it most likely means a mix of herbs such as parsley, chervil, tarragon and chives sweated in butter, closer to a herb duxelles than to a sprinkle of chopped leaves. Four tablespoonfuls against two or three of bechamel makes a very herbaceous filling.
- "Glaze" the shellsThe second use of the word means to brown the top under the salamander. A broiler on high for two or three minutes does it; the filling is already hot, so you are only colouring the Parmesan.
- The poulette flour is wrongA teacupful of flour to a teacupful of broth is a stiff paste, not a sauce. Read it as a normal blond roux — roughly two tablespoons each of butter and flour to a cup of broth — and add liquid until it coats a spoon.
- Boiling the brains twelve to fifteen minutesThe recipe does not say whether the brains go in raw or already poached; if they have already been cooked they will disintegrate at that length in simmering sauce, so slide them in to warm through for three or four minutes off a hard boil. The egg-yolk-and-lemon liaison at the end must not boil either, or it curdles.
- Black butterA gill is half a cup. Beurre noir in the old sense was butter taken well past nut-brown until genuinely dark, usually finished with vinegar and capers; current kitchen practice stops at beurre noisette, since scorched milk solids turn acrid and bitter.
- Braising the breast"Braise it for an hour and a half" means covered, with liquid; the book gives no temperature, and a moderate oven of around 325F is a reasonable modern reading. A boned and rolled two-and-a-half-pound breast will often want two hours or more before it is genuinely tender. Milanese garnish here is macaroni or noodles with ham, tongue, mushroom and truffle in a tomato-tinged sauce.
- Typo"Put in some young white onions and fish cooking" is a compositor's error for finish cooking.
- YieldEight or nine filled shells serve four to six as a first course. The braised breast serves four to five.
Oscar Tschirky was never technically the chef of the Waldorf — he was the maître d'hôtel — but the 1896 book that carries his name records what a great New York hotel kitchen actually sent out, and that included a great deal of offal. Brains were standard fine-dining fare on both sides of the Atlantic in the 1890s: soft, mild, cheap to buy and expensive to prepare properly, which is exactly the combination hotel kitchens liked. The scallop-shell service here is the old coquille treatment, a portion of something rich bound in sauce, capped with Parmesan and browned, used equally for oysters, crab and sweetbreads. Poulette — a velouté finished with egg yolk and lemon — and beurre noir were among the standard dressings for brains in the French repertoire, and both appear in Escoffier's Guide Culinaire of 1903. What has changed is the audience: American appetite for brains fell away through the twentieth century, and the BSE outbreaks of the 1980s and 1990s effectively removed bovine brain from the restaurant menu in much of the English-speaking world.