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. 2446

Lambs' Brains with Mayonnaise

Cervelles d'Agneau a la Mayonnaise

Steep six lambs' brains in fresh water for half an hour; skin them by lifting off the thin cuticle enveloping them, also the sanguineous fibers, and return them to fresh water to soak for two hours more. Place them in a saucepan with sufficient boiling water to cover, adding salt and vinegar, and let boil slowly for twenty minutes. When cold and drained, dress in a circle, placing between every brain a crouton of red lambs' tongue cut to resemble cocks'-combs; decorate all around with garnishing of eggs (No. 2513), gherkins and beets; fill the center of the circle with some green mayonnaise with fine herbs (No. 612), and surround with pretty clear jelly croutons.

← No. 2445 Molded Jelly Border The Cold Service No. 2447 Cases of Lobster a la Ravigote-Small →

For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer writes for a brigade with a larder full of numbered components, so half this recipe is cross-references. The eating part is simple: soaked, peeled, gently poached brains served cold with a herbed green mayonnaise.

The hinge is the soaking and peelingTwo and a half hours in cold water, changed once after skinning, is not padding; it draws out blood and lets the outer membrane lift cleanly. Brains that keep their membrane and blood vessels cook grey and taste metallic.
Poach, do not boil"Boil slowly" here means a bare shiver rather than a rolling boil, which breaks the lobes apart. Lamb brains are small and twenty minutes is generous; a shorter, gentler poach will set them firm enough to slice, and they finish firming as they chill.
Cool them in the liquidThe original says only "when cold and drained." Let them cool in the acidulated poaching water, then drain and chill; brains lifted out hot go dry and crumble at the edges.
"Croutons" are not bread"Croutons" here are not bread -- in this cold dish a crouton is a cut shape: cockscomb shapes cut from cooked, pressed red lamb tongue, and the "jelly croutons" cut from a sheet of set clear aspic.
The cross-referencesNo. 612 is Ranhofer's green mayonnaise with fine herbs, a mayonnaise tinted and flavoured with pounded green herbs. No. 2513 is his egg garnish. Any good ravigote-style green mayonnaise and halved or stuffed eggs will serve.
Sourcing and regulationLamb brains are no longer a supermarket item and in some jurisdictions ruminant brain is restricted as specified risk material because of TSE controls; in the UK and EU sheep skull and brain from animals over twelve months, or with a permanent incisor erupted, is excluded from the food chain. Where they are legal they are usually a butcher's special order, often frozen. Buy pale, plump sets with no yellowing, and use them the day they thaw.
YieldSix brains make a cold platter for six as a first course, or four as a light lunch. Assemble on the serving dish, since a dressed circle of brains cannot be moved.

A Little History

This comes from Charles Ranhofer's The Epicurean (1894), the enormous record of his years as chef at Delmonico's in New York, and it sits in the cold service section among the dishes that went out on buffets and at late suppers, where everything was arranged on the platter in advance and held on ice. Cold brains with a green mayonnaise are a straight transposition of French bourgeois cooking into a luxury American context: cervelles were cheap and highly regarded for their delicacy, and Ranhofer's contribution is the presentation, a ring of pale lobes punctuated by scarlet tongue cut into cockscombs, a shape borrowed from the old repertoire of garnitures where real cockscombs were themselves a prized item. The lavish use of numbered sub-recipes for the mayonnaise, the garnished eggs and the aspic shows how the book was meant to work, as a kitchen manual for a staff rather than a household cookbook, and the ease with which offal appears on a Delmonico's menu is a reminder that the modern squeamishness about brains is a twentieth-century development, hardened by later concerns about spongiform disease in ruminants.