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. 1482

Brains in Matelote

Cervelles en Matelote

have the brains prepared and cooked as for the aurora. Brown in a pan either with butter or lard, three dozen small raw onions, seasoning with salt and a pinch of sugar; when of a fine color, put them into a small sautoir with some broth, and finish cooking, letting the liquid fall several times to a glaze; drain the brains, wipe dry, and dress them triangle-shaped on a dish; between each brain set a few of the onions, a cluster of stoned and stuffed olives, and one of small mushroom heads. Cover the brains with a brown sauce reduced with red wine, and finished with a little anchovy butter; garnish around with trussed crawfish.

← No. 1481 Brains a la Poulette with Mushrooms Veal No. 1483 Brains, Peasant Style →

For the Modern Kitchen Do not make this as written.

Ranhofer writes for a professional brigade with a stockpot always going and a cross-reference system instead of a full ingredient list. The dish is really a garnish assembly: poached brains, glazed onions, olives, mushrooms, a red-wine brown sauce.

What "prepared as for the aurora" meansThe earlier brains recipes call for soaking in several changes of cold water until the blood is drawn out, peeling away the surrounding membrane and veins, then poaching in a court-bouillon acidulated with vinegar or lemon. Do that first; everything else here is assembly.
The hinge: never let the poaching liquid boilThe hinge: do not let the poaching liquid boil -- Ranhofer gives no temperature or timing here, but brains are set at a bare shiver rather than a rolling boil, which tears them apart and makes the texture grainy. Cool them in their liquid, then drain and wipe dry as directed, or the sauce will slide off.
Sautoir and "falling to a glaze"A sautoir is a shallow straight-sided saute pan, not a lidded baking dish. Letting the broth "fall several times to a glaze" means adding stock in stages and reducing each addition to a syrup that coats the onions -- the same method as glazed carrots.
Three dozen small raw onionsThese are pearl or small pickling onions, about 1 lb. Peel them, brown in butter with salt and a pinch of sugar, then glaze. Frozen peeled pearl onions work but give up water and brown poorly.
Brown sauce with red wineRanhofer means espagnole, a flour-thickened brown veal stock reduced with wine. Reduced veal stock or a good demi-glace slackened with red wine and reduced again gives the same result with less flour.
Anchovy butter, off the heatMash anchovy fillets or paste into soft butter and whisk it into the sauce only after it comes off the fire. Boiling the butter in breaks the emulsion and turns the anchovy harsh.
Trussed crawfishWhole crawfish cooked in court-bouillon and arranged with the tail curled under and claws hooked into place -- decoration in the matelote idiom rather than a component. Omit them and the dish loses nothing but nineteenth-century display.
YieldOne pair of calf brains serves two as a course. The recipe does not say how many brains to use, only that they are dressed triangle-shaped with garnish set between each, so scale the onions, olives and mushrooms to what you buy.
Sourcing todayBovine brain from older cattle is restricted as specified risk material in the US, the UK and the EU because of BSE, and cooking does not affect prions. If you make this, buy calf or lamb brains from a butcher who can tell you their origin, or expect to special-order them.

A Little History

A matelote is properly a boatman's dish -- freshwater fish, usually eel or carp, stewed in red wine with small onions, mushrooms and crayfish -- and by the nineteenth century the name had detached from the fish and come to mean that garnish and that sauce applied to anything. Charles Ranhofer, chef at Delmonico's in New York and author of The Epicurean (1894), works through variations on a base preparation the way a reference book does: the brains are poached once and then sent out a la poulette, peasant style, or here dressed in the freshwater-fish livery of red wine, glazed onions and trussed crayfish. Calf's brains were unremarkable restaurant fare then, cheap offal treated with the same sauce work given to sweetbreads, and their disappearance from American menus reflects both a long decline in appetite for offal and, from the 1990s, the BSE controls on brain and other specified risk material.