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. 648

Fried Calves' Brain Garnishing

Garniture de Cervelles Frites

Calves and lambs' brains are those most generally used for garnishings. They are first soaked so as to be able to scrape and cleanse them properly, then cooked in water with some salt, vinegar, thyme, bay leaf, sliced onions, branches of parsley and pepper corns. Let the brains get cold in a vessel containing their own strained broth, and then divide the calves' brains into six pieces, and lambs' brains into two rounds or ovals. Dip them in beaten eggs, roll them in white bread-crumbs and fry them a fine golden color in hot fat. Serve separately a Chateaubriand sauce (No. 446).

← No. 647 Brussels Garnishing Garnishings No. 649 Cardinal Garnishing →

For the Modern Kitchen Do not make this as written.

Ranhofer's method is sound classical technique, but the central ingredient is now regulated rather than merely unfashionable. The problem is the tissue itself, not the cooking.

Bovine brain is specified risk materialCentral nervous system tissue from cattle is the principal carrier of the BSE agent. In the United States and the European Union, brain from cattle above a set age (30 months in the US rule) is prohibited from the food supply as specified risk material, and whole-head processing is tightly controlled.
Cooking does not helpThe infectious agent in BSE is a misfolded protein, not a bacterium. It survives boiling, frying, and ordinary autoclaving. The court bouillon and the hot fat in this recipe reduce spoilage organisms and do nothing whatever to prion infectivity.
Soaking and scraping are not a safeguardThe soaking and removal of membranes described here is about texture and appearance. It does not separate out the tissue of concern, which is the brain substance itself.
Lambs' brains are a separate questionSheep carry scrapie, a related disease with no demonstrated transmission to humans. Ovine brain is nevertheless treated as specified risk material in the EU for animals over a set age, and several countries restrict it.
Sourcing cannot be verified at homeThe safety of any offal of this kind depends largely on the age of the animal and on abattoir controls that a cook has no way of confirming after the fact. That is one reason this preparation is much less common in professional kitchens than it once was.
If you want the garnishFor a fried, crumbed garnish served with Chateaubriand sauce, consult a current recipe using a different component. Do not adapt the timings or method above.

A Little History

The Epicurean (1894) is Charles Ranhofer's summary of some thirty years as chef at Delmonico's in New York, and it is built like a reference work rather than a cookbook: the numbered garnishings form a whole section of interchangeable parts, to be called up by number in the composition of a larger dish. Cervelles had a settled place in that repertoire. Brains were cheap and delicate in texture, and the treatment given here is the standard one found in French kitchens of the period: soak and clean, poach gently in an acidulated court bouillon with aromatics, cool in the cooking liquor so the flesh stays firm and white, then crumb and fry. The vinegar is generally understood to help keep the flesh firm and white as well as to season it. That such a preparation could be listed casually among dozens of garnishes suggests how much wider the American restaurant use of offal was in the 1890s than it is now, well before the BSE epidemics of the 1980s and 1990s curtailed the trade in bovine nervous tissue.