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.
Home › Popular Dixie Dishes › Entrees
Entrees
BRUNSWICK STEW. -Stew one chicken or two squirrels in half gallon water until bones can be removed. Cook in separate saucepans six large ripe tomatoes, one half pint butter-beans and six ears of corn cut from cob, , add to cut pieces of chicken from which bones have been removed; season with salt, pepper and butter; cook until thick enough to be eaten with fork; will require probably four hours cooking. An excellent old Virginia dish. BROILED KIDNEYS. - Chop fine one teaspoonful each of Onions, parsley and any.green herb in season. Mix them with one level teaspoonful of salt, half a level salt spoon of pepper, as much cayenne as can be taken up on the point of a small pen-knife blade, and once ounce butter; put them on a dish, and set it where it will get hot. Wash the kidneys in cold water and salt, split them, take out the white centers, broil them quickly, and put them on the hot dish, turning them over to cover them equally with the seasonings. Serve them hot, with a few sprigs of parsley or slices of lemon. TO FRY BRAINS. - Soak several hours in weak brine to extract blood, drain and simmer four minutes in very little boiling water; handle lightly in forming round cakes; pepper them and use very little salt; have ready a beaten egg, with which cover top of cakes, sift over grated crackers, then cover under side in same way and fry in hot lard; keep closely covered while frying.-Mrs. S. T.
Three separate dishes share this page. Two are straightforward; the third, the fried brains, should be read rather than cooked.
- Why the brains recipe failsBovine brain and spinal tissue are the highest-risk material for BSE, the agent behind variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, and the infectious prion is not destroyed by soaking, simmering or frying in lard. The recipe does not say whose brains are meant. Bovine specified risk material has been barred from the human food chain in the UK and EU since the late 1990s, and restricted in the US since 2004 (brain from cattle of 30 months and older). No preparation makes prion-infected tissue safe.
- The brine is not a cureThe "weak brine" here is a blood-drawing soak of unstated strength, not a preservative treatment, and the four-minute simmer is a blanch. Neither step addresses any pathogen.
- Brunswick stew: the meatA whole chicken of about 3 to 4 lb replaces the two squirrels. Half a gallon of water is 8 cups, which is generous; expect to reduce it substantially, since the finished stew should hold its shape on a fork.
- Butter-beansThese are lima beans. Half a pint is a cup, measured shelled; a cup of frozen baby limas is the practical stand-in and needs far less cooking than the dried.
- Four hours, and whyThe long cooking is for reduction and for breaking the vegetables down into the body of the stew, not for tenderising the bird. Once the chicken is off the bone, keep it at a bare simmer and stir often near the end, when the corn starch makes it catch.
- Kidneys: what to buyLamb kidneys are the usual choice for splitting and broiling, two per person. Beef kidney is coarse and strong and does not suit this treatment.
- The white centersThe core of fat and connective tissue must come out with scissors or a small knife, or the kidney will curl and turn tough. Split them lengthwise and keep them opened flat.
- Broil quickly means quicklyTwo to three minutes a side under a hot broiler, until the cut face is browned and the inside still faintly pink. Kidneys go rubbery within a minute of overcooking, and the compound butter on the hot dish finishes them as they rest.
- Salt spoon and cayenneA salt spoon is usually reckoned at roughly a quarter teaspoon, so half of one is about an eighth. The cayenne taken up on the point of a small knife blade amounts to a small pinch.
- YieldOn these quantities the stew should serve about six to eight. The kidneys, at two per person, are a breakfast or supper dish rather than a main course.
Brunswick stew is claimed by both Brunswick County, Virginia, and Brunswick, Georgia, and the Virginia attribution the book gives here reflects the version that circulated in nineteenth-century Southern cookbooks: squirrel first, chicken as the substitute, thickened by nothing but long reduction and the starch of the corn. The squirrel is the older reading, and it marks the dish as camp and hunting-season cookery before it became a church-supper and political-barbecue staple. Kidneys and brains on the same page are a reminder of how completely the offal side of the butcher's counter has receded from home cooking; a book of this period assumed a household would use the whole animal, and organ meats appeared under breakfast and entree headings without comment. The signature "Mrs. S. T." is typical of the regional compilations of the 1880s and 1890s, which assembled contributions from named and initialled local subscribers rather than a single author.