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. 1486

Brains with Venetian or Green Holandaise Sauce

Cervelles a la Sauce Venetienne ou a la Sauce Hollandaise Verte

Blanch the calves' brains the same as for the poulette; divide each one in four parts and dress every piece on a separate oval-shaped slice of bread that has been fried in butter; place them on a hot dish and cover either with Venetian sauce, or Hollandaise vert pre sauce.

← No. 1485 Brains with Tomatoed Bearnaise Sauce (cervel Veal No. 1487 Breast of Veal a la Bourdaloue →

For the Modern Kitchen Do not make this as written.

This is a cross-referenced entry from Ranhofer's The Epicurean (1894): the brains are prepared as in No. 1483/1484 (à la poulette), then quartered, set on fried croûtons and sauced. It reads simply, but the central ingredient is one that modern food law and modern food safety treat very differently from the way Delmonico's did.

Why this one is off the tableBovine central nervous tissue is the principal carrier of the agent that causes bovine spongiform encephalopathy and, in humans, variant CJD. Brain and spinal cord are classed as specified risk material and prions are not destroyed by blanching, poaching, or any normal kitchen heat.
Regulation, not just cautionIn the United States brain from cattle 30 months and older is prohibited in the food supply, and the EU and UK operate comparable specified-risk-material rules (in the EU the bovine skull and brain count as SRM from 12 months). Calves fall below those thresholds, so calves' brains can be sold legally, but the age and inspection status behind a given piece is not something a home cook can easily confirm. Ranhofer bought from a market with none of these categories in existence.
The sauces carry their own issueHollandaise verte is hollandaise, an egg-yolk and butter emulsion, tinted with a purée of blanched herbs; Venetian sauce is velouté-based and finished with herb butter, though such sauces may also be enriched with yolks. Held at serving temperature on a hot dish, a yolk-based sauce sits in the range where the yolk is neither pasteurised nor refrigerated.
What the cross-reference conceals"Blanch the same as for the poulette" points back to an earlier entry; in the classical method that means soaking to draw the blood, peeling away the membrane, then poaching gently in acidulated water — a long handling stage in which the raw tissue is worked over by hand.
If you want the shape of the dishThe croûton-and-sauce framework — an oval of bread fried in butter, a soft white garnish, a green herb emulsion over it — belongs to poached sweetbreads, poached eggs, or fish quenelles as much as to brains. Consult a current recipe for whichever of those you choose rather than adapting this one.
Reading the numberingThe arrows and numbers are the book's own navigation, not part of the method. The neighbouring entries are veal preparations — No. 1485 is another brain dish, while No. 1487 is breast of veal — and this entry refers back to the earlier poulette recipe for the blanching.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer ran the kitchen at Delmonico's in New York for some three decades, and The Epicurean (1894) is the record of that repertoire: a French professional's catalogue in which calves' brains merit a run of numbered variations, distinguished only by the sauce poured over them. Brains were unremarkable then — for exactly the quality that makes them a curiosity now, a texture between custard and sweetbread that needed a sharp or herbal sauce to set it off. The two named here are both, in their classical definitions, egg-and-butter emulsions: sauce vénitienne, a pale velouté-based sauce finished with herb butter and tarragon vinegar, and hollandaise verte, hollandaise coloured with a purée of blanched parsley, chervil and tarragon. The croûton beneath is the period's standard answer to a soft, wet garnish — a fried oval of bread to keep the portion distinct on the plate and to soak up what ran off it. Brain dishes stayed on European and American menus until the BSE epidemic of the late 1980s and 1990s, after which regulators in Britain, the EU and the United States restricted bovine central nervous tissue by age and species, and a once-routine entrée became a historical entry.