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.

No. 1480

Brains a la Chassaigne

Cervelles a la Chassaigne

Prepare the brains the same as for the poulette; drain and dress them on a hot dish and cover with the following sauce: Have a pint of veloute, four hard boiled egg-yolks pounded with six ounces of butter, a tablespoonful of English mustard; pass the whole through a fine sieve, and add chopped and blanched chervil, chives, tarragon, and shallot, also a little spinach or vegetal green. Season properly, then add just when serving, a few chopped gherkins; pour this sauce over the brains.

← No. 1479 Brains a l'Aurora Veal No. 1481 Brains a la Poulette with Mushrooms →

For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer assumes you can turn to No. 1479 and to his velouté entry, so the page reads as shorthand. Here is what it leaves out.

"Prepare the brains the same as for the poulette"That means the standard treatment: soak in several changes of cold water until they stop bleeding, peel away the outer membrane and blood vessels, then poach gently in an acidulated court-bouillon (water, salt, a splash of vinegar, aromatics) at a bare shiver, commonly a quarter of an hour or so for a calf's brain. They should never boil hard or they break up. Ranhofer has them drained and dressed on a hot dish here, though brains are often left to firm in their cooking liquid before dressing.
Sourcing and legalityBeef and veal brains are classed as specified risk material in many jurisdictions because of BSE. In the United States brains from cattle 30 months and older are barred from the food supply; in the EU the skull and brain of bovines over 12 months are excluded as human food, so what is sold comes from younger animals. Where calf brains are still available it is generally through a butcher rather than a supermarket case. Lamb or pork brains are a common substitute where they are permitted.
A pint of veloutéTwo cups of veal velouté — white roux slackened with veal stock and simmered until it coats. Chicken velouté is a fair stand-in. The finished sauce is thick, so keep a little extra stock to loosen it.
The egg-and-butter liaisonFour hard-boiled yolks pounded with six ounces (170 g) of butter, sieved into hot velouté, makes this essentially a compound-butter sauce. Add it off the heat and do not let the sauce return to a boil afterwards, or the butter will break and the yolks will granulate.
English mustardHot dry mustard powder of the Colman's type, slaked with a little cold water and left five minutes to bloom before it goes in. A tablespoon of the made paste is aggressive against poached brains; a tablespoon of the dry powder is more so. Start with half and taste.
"Vegetal green"Ranhofer means vert d'épinards: spinach leaves pounded, the juice heated until the chlorophyll coagulates, then strained through cloth. It colours without flavouring. A tablespoon of very finely puréed blanched spinach does the same job.
The herbsChervil, chives, tarragon and shallot, briefly blanched and squeezed dry so they hold colour and lose the shallot's rawness. Ranhofer's phrase, "chopped and blanched," puts the chopping first.
Gherkins lastThe vinegar in cornichons can thin a butter-mounted sauce if it stands. Fold them in at the pass, as written.
YieldTwo calf brains serve four as an entrée. The pint of sauce is generous for that quantity; half is often enough.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer's The Epicurean (1894) set down thirty years of Delmonico's kitchen practice in New York, and its veal chapter carries brains through several classical dressings — à la poulette, à l'aurore — because calf brains were then ordinary restaurant fare rather than an oddity. The sauce here is a velouté enriched in the manner of a beurre de Montpellier, the cold green herb-and-yolk butter of the garde-manger classically served with cold fish, worked warm instead: pounded yolks, butter, mustard, fine herbs, spinach green and gherkins. Personal names of this kind in nineteenth-century French menus usually honour a patron, a chef or a colleague, and no attribution for Chassaigne is documented in the book itself. The dish belongs to a period when offal appeared on the same carte as canvasback duck.