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. 2355

Shells of Spinal Marrow or Brains

Coquilles d'Amourettes ou de Cervelles

After the spinal marrow or brains have been prepared and ccoked as explained in No. 1549, drain and cut them up in one-inch length slices, butter the interiors of either china or silver shells (Fig. 438), cover the insides with white bread raspings, fill the shells with the pieces of spinal marrow, and pour over a white Italian sauce (No. 484). Cover the tops with some well-seasoned bechamel sauce (No. 409), besprinkle with bread-crumbs and parmesan cheese, add a little butter, and brown in a hot oven. Dress them crown-shaped on a folded napkin, garnishing with sprigs of green parsley.

← No. 2354 Shells of Scallops, Parisian Style Miscellaneous Entrées No. 2356 Shells of Squabs Baked →

For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer assumes you have already poached and chilled the brains or spinal marrow under his No. 1549, and that you keep two mother sauces on hand. Stripped of the cross-references, this is a gratin: cold poached offal, sliced, sauced twice, and browned fast.

The hinge: cook and chill before you sliceThe hinge: cook and cool before you slice -- Amourettes and brains are conventionally soaked in several changes of cold water, the surface membrane and clotted blood peeled away, then poached gently in an acidulated liquid; Ranhofer sends you to No. 1549 for this. Cooled and firm, they cut into clean one-inch lengths far more easily than they do warm.
AmourettesSpinal marrow of beef or veal — the cord itself, not bone marrow. Very few butchers carry it now; calf's brains are the practical substitute and the recipe treats the two as interchangeable.
Sourcing and prion riskBovine brain and spinal cord are classed as specified risk material and are restricted or banned outright depending on the animal's age and where you live; cooking does not destroy prions. Buy only from an inspected butcher who can tell you the species and age, and check local rules before ordering.
ShellsCoquilles here are the deep scallop-shaped china or silver dishes sold by the dozen for gratins. Individual gratin dishes or 4-inch ramekins do the same job; real scallop shells work if they sit flat.
Bread raspingsNot fresh crumbs. Raspings are the dried, rasped crust of stale bread, sieved fine — closer to a coarse dry breadcrumb or panko crushed small. They line the buttered shell to keep the sauce from catching.
White Italian sauceSauce italienne blanche: a velouté-based sauce built on a dry duxelles of mushroom and shallot with white wine reduced away, finished with chopped herbs. Ranhofer's No. 484 gives the exact composition. The brown version uses demi-glace and would muddy this dish.
A hot ovenRanhofer specifies only 'a hot oven'; in a modern oven that means a high setting and a high shelf, just long enough to glaze the top. Everything in the shell is already cooked, and a long stay in the oven does the bechamel no favours. A broiler does it faster.
Yield and serviceThe recipe gives no yield; count one shell per person as a first course and buy accordingly. Service on a folded napkin was the standard presentation of the period; a warmed plate or a wire rack serves now.

A Little History

Amourettes — literally "little loves" — is the name often said to have served as the old French butcher's euphemism for the spinal cord of beef and veal, one of a family of coy names the trade used for organ meats it expected the kitchen, not the customer, to recognise. Charles Ranhofer, chef at Delmonico's in New York for over thirty years, published The Epicurean in 1894 as a complete record of the restaurant's repertoire, and the Miscellaneous Entr u00e9es chapter is full of these small hot dishes served in shells: scallops, squab, sweetbreads, brains, each a way of turning a modest quantity of something rich into an individual course. Offal of this kind was standard high-restaurant material in the nineteenth century rather than a curiosity, and calf's brains in particular appear across French cookery of the period in every form from fritters to beurre noir. The double sauce and the parmesan gratin are standard French gratin practice of the period — the point of the dish was less the brains than the finish.