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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Tongue, Sweetbread, Calf's: Villeroy
No. 122. Marinata di Cervello alla Villeroy (Calf's Brains) Ingredients: Calf's brains, stock, Béchamel sauce, eggs, butter, lemon, forcemeat of fowl, flour.
Boil a calf's or sheep's brain in good stock, wipe it well, and cut it up. Reduce a pint of Béchamel (No. 3), and add to it the yolks of three eggs, an ounce of butter, and the juice of a lemon, When it boils throw in the cut-up brain; let it cool, then take out the brain and form it into little balls about the size of a small walnut. Make a forcemeat of fowl, and add a dessert-spoonful of flour to it, and spread it out very thin on a paste-board, and into this wrap the balls of brain, each separately. Dip them into a pasta marinata (No. 17), and fry them a golden brown.
No. 123. Minuta alla Milanese (Lamb's Sweetbread) Ingredients: Lamb's sweetbread, butter, onions, stock, Chablis, salt, lemon, herbs, cocks' combs, fowls' livers.
Cut up equal quantities of lamb's sweetbreads, cocks' combs, fowls' livers in pieces about the size of a filbert, flour and fry them slightly in butter and a small bit of onion, add half a glass of Chablis, a cup of good stock, and a bunch of herbs. Reduce the sauce, and thicken it with a tablespoonful of butter and flour fried together.
Make a border of Risotto all' italiana (No.190), and put the sweetbread, &c., together with the sauce in the centre.
No. 124.
Animelle al Sapor di Targone (Lamb's Fry) Ingredients : Lamb's fry, ham, garlic, larding bacon, spice, herbs, butter, flour, stock.
The lamb's fry should be nearly all sweetbread, and very little liver. Lard each piece with bacon and ham, and roll it in chopped herbs and a pinch of pounded spice. Then dip it in flour and braize in good stock, to which add three ounces of butter, some bits of bacon, ham, a bay leaf, herbs, and a clove of garlic with two cuts.
Cook until the fry is well glazed over, and serve with Tarragon sauce (No. 8). Do not leave the garlic in longer than ten minutes.
No. 125. Fritto Misto alla Villeroy Ingredients: Cocks' combs, calf's brains, sweetbread, stock, truffles, mushrooms, Villeroy, eggs, bread crumbs.
Cook some big cocks' combs, bits of calf's brains, and sweetbread in good stock, then drain them and marinate them slightly in lemon juice and herbs. Prepare a Villeroy (No. 18), and add to it cuttings of sweetbread, brains, truffles, mushrooms, &c.
When it is cold, mask the cocks' combs and other inspice, herbs, butter, flour, gredients with it, egg and bread-crumb them, and fry them a golden brown.
No. 126. Fritto Misto alla Piemontese Ingredients: Sweetbread, calf's brains, ox palate, flour, eggs, Chablis, salt, herbs, butter.
Make a thin paste with a tablespoonful of flour, the yolks of two eggs, two spoonsful of Chablis, and a little salt. Mix this up well, and if it is too thick add a little water. Beat up the whites of the two eggs into a snow.
In the meantime blanch a sweetbread, half a calf's brain, and a few bits of cooked ox palate; boil them all up with a bunch of herbs; cut them into pieces about the size of a walnut, and dip them into the paste so that each piece is well covered, then dip them into the beaten-up whites of egg, and fry them very quickly in butter. This fry is generrally served with a garnish of French beans, which should not be cut up, but half boiled, then dried, floured over and fried together with the other ingredients. The ox palates should be boiled for at least six hours before you use them in this dish.
Five fried and braised offal dishes from the Italian repertoire, three of which are built on calf's or sheep's brain. Those cannot be made today, and the reasons are specific rather than squeamish.
- The brain is the problemNos. 122, 125 and 126 all call for calf's or sheep's brain. Bovine central nervous tissue is the principal carrier of the BSE prion, and consumption is linked to variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, which is untreatable and fatal. Brain and spinal cord from cattle above the relevant age thresholds are classed as specified risk material and excluded from the food chain in the EU, the UK and the United States; sheep brain carries the related scrapie concern.
- Cooking does not helpPrions are not inactivated by boiling in stock, by frying golden brown, or by any temperature reachable in a domestic kitchen. The instruction to boil the brain first offers no protection whatever.
- Ox palate is also nervous-adjacent butcheryNo. 126's ox palate is muscle and connective tissue rather than nervous material, but cattle head meat is subject to controls in many jurisdictions because of the proximity of skull material, and palate is now hard to source. The six-hour boil the recipe demands reflects how tough the tissue is.
- Sweetbreads are a different thing entirelySweetbread is the thymus or pancreas, not brain, and remains a legal and ordinary butcher's item. Nos. 123 and 124 are sound in principle; if you want to cook them, work from a current recipe rather than adapting these, since the page as printed assumes brain and palate alongside.
- Villeroy and pasta marinataA Villeroy is firm when cold, used to coat morsels before crumbing. Pasta marinata is here used as a frying coating dipped into before the pan, not as a marinade; the recipe for it (No. 17) is not on this page.
- Archaic sizing and measuresA filbert is a hazelnut, so roughly 2 cm dice; "the size of a small walnut" is about 3 cm. A dessert-spoonful is two teaspoons. The book does not define a "glass" of Chablis; the conventional period wineglassful is about 2 fl oz, which would make half a glass about 1 fl oz.
- Cocks' combsA standard garnish in nineteenth-century grand cookery, blanched and peeled of their outer skin before poaching. They are very hard to buy now outside specialist butchers.
- What to make insteadIf the intention is a fritto misto or a sweetbread Milanese on a risotto border, use a modern recipe with brain and ox palate simply left out. Do not attempt a straight substitution or a partial version of Nos. 122, 125 or 126.
The Cook's Decameron (1901) is Mrs W. G. Waters's collection of Italian dishes hung on a Boccaccio-style frame of ten diners over ten days. Its offal chapter reflects a period when the fine chopping-board work of the professional kitchen — combs, palates, fries, brains, sweetbreads, all reduced to filbert-sized pieces and either crumbed or braised — was still expected of an ambitious domestic cook. Fritto misto means simply "mixed fry", and the regional labels here mark real distinctions: the Piedmontese version leans on a wine batter and beaten egg white, the Milanese on a risotto border. The Villeroy sauce is a French import into an Italian book, generally traced to the household of the ducs de Villeroy, though the attribution is traditional rather than documented. The BSE epidemic of the 1980s and 1990s brought this line of cookery to an effective end in Britain and much of Europe, and brain dishes that had been unremarkable for centuries largely disappeared from butchers' counters.