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. 2244

Crepine of Brains

Crepine de Cervelles

Prepare and cook some brains as for the poulette (No. 1481); when well drained, split them in four through the thickest part. Blanch one pound of onions, cut in eighth of an inch dice pieces, in salted water for ten minutes; drain them off, then fry these in butter to cook without coloring; season with salt, pepper, nutmeg, thyme and bay leaf; add a quart of veloute sauce (No. 415), reduce well, suppress the thyme and bay leaf, and thicken with six egg-yolks and a little butter; let this preparation cool off partially, then envelop the slices of brains in plenty of it, and then wrap them in "crepine" or caul fat, giving each one a flat oval-shape; dip in butter and roll in bread-crumbs, broil over a slow fire, and serve on a slightly thickened aspic gravy (No. 391).

← No. 2243 Crepine of Pullet Miscellaneous Entrées No. 2245 Crepine of Chicken a la Turenne-Breasts →

For the Modern Kitchen

A crépinette in all but name: cooked brains bound in a thick onion velouté, wrapped in caul, crumbed and grilled. Ranhofer assumes you have his other numbered recipes at hand, so the page reads as shorthand.

The hinge: the binding must be cold and stiffThe hinge: the binding must be stiff enough to hold -- The onion velouté thickened with six yolks has to be reduced hard and cooled before it will coat the brains. Ranhofer says only to "let this preparation cool off partially"; cool it at least until it is thick enough to spread without slumping out of the caul on the grill.
Cooked "as for the poulette"No. 1481 is not given here; the standard preparation it points to is brains soaked in cold water to purge blood, the outer membrane and veins peeled away, then poached gently in an acidulated court-bouillon. Either way they are fully cooked at this stage; the grilling is only to brown the crust.
Sourcing brainsBovine brain is restricted as specified risk material: in the EU and UK the skull and brain of cattle over 12 months, in the US of cattle 30 months and older, must be removed and destroyed rather than sold. What you will find, where you find anything, is veal, lamb or pork brain from a butcher who orders it; a whole calf's brain is roughly 8-10 oz. Ranhofer does not say how many brains this quantity of sauce is meant to coat.
Caul fatCrépine is the lacy fatty membrane from around a pig's stomach and intestines. It comes salted or frozen, and needs soaking in tepid water, sometimes with a splash of vinegar, until it unfolds without tearing. Most of it renders away during cooking, leaving largely the browned crumb.
Velouté quantitiesA quart of velouté (No. 415, white stock thickened with a blond roux) against a pound of onions is a great deal of sauce; "reduce well" means taking it down to a very thick purée, though Ranhofer gives no target volume.
Egg-yolk liaisonAdd the yolks off the direct heat and stir them in below a simmer. Boiled after the yolks go in, the sauce curdles and will not set smooth.
"Dip in butter"Melted butter, not softened butter. The crumb coat is a single pass: butter, then fine dry breadcrumbs, pressed on.
"Broil over a slow fire"A moderate grill with the packets set well back from the heat. Under an overhead broiler they will scorch before the interior warms through; since the brains are already cooked, the fire only has to brown the crumb and heat the parcels through.
YieldEach brain split in four gives four small ovals; Ranhofer states neither a number of brains nor a yield. Serve on the aspic gravy (No. 391) spooned onto the plate beneath.

A Little History

The Epicurean (1894) is Charles Ranhofer's account of thirty-odd years running the kitchens at Delmonico's in New York, and its recipes — commonly cited as some 3,500 in number — are cross-referenced like an engineering manual rather than written for a home cook. A crépine is the caul fat itself, and a crépinette the forcemeat parcel wrapped in it, a technique of French charcuterie that let the kitchen give a soft filling a firm shape and a self-basting skin before the era of cling film and moulds; Ranhofer gives a run of them here, made with pullet, chicken breast and brains in turn. Brains were unremarkable restaurant food on both sides of the Atlantic through the nineteenth century, valued for a texture that no other cut supplies, and they are often said to appear in nearly every serious French repertory of the period. Their near-disappearance from Anglophone menus is recent and has more to do with BSE regulation in the 1990s than with any change in taste.