No. 757

Spinal Marrow Garnishing

Garniture d'Amourettes

Calf's spinal marrow is preferable to beef's. Put three pounds of calf's spinal marrow to soak in cold water for three hours, changing the water each hour; then remove the thin sanguineous skin covering them and trim them. Cook them for a few minutes in a little salted water with some vinegar, parsley leaves, thyme, bay leaf, whole peppers, and sliced onions; pour it all into a bowl and let the marrow get cold in the stock, then cut them up into pieces two inches long. Bread-crumb half of these, dip them in egg, and fry them until they acquire a good color. Drain and wipe well the other half, saute them in butter, seasoning with salt, pepper, and fine herbs. A Colbert sauce (No. 451), accompanies this garnishing served in a separate sauce-boat.

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For the Modern Kitchen Do not make this as written.

This is a garnish of spinal cord, and it cannot be prepared today. The material it calls for is legally excluded from the food supply in the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada and the European Union, and the reason is not squeamishness.

Why it is prohibitedBovine spinal cord is classed as specified risk material (SRM) because it is among the tissues that concentrate the infectious prions of bovine spongiform encephalopathy. Following the BSE epidemic of the 1980s and 1990s, spinal cord and other central nervous tissue from cattle were removed from the human food supply in every major market, under age thresholds that differ by jurisdiction (over twelve months in the EU, thirty months and older in the United States).
Cooking does not helpPrions are misfolded proteins, not bacteria. They survive the few minutes of simmering this recipe calls for, and they survive far harsher treatment than any domestic kitchen can apply. There is no time or temperature that makes this dish safe, which is why no corrected version is given here.
"Calf's is preferable to beef's"Ranhofer's preference for veal is no general exemption. Age thresholds do exist in the SRM rules for spinal cord (over twelve months in the EU, thirty months and over in the United States), but the tissue is not a normal item of retail trade at any age, and slaughter and dressing rules make it effectively unobtainable.
Not the same as bone marrowAmourettes means spinal cord, drawn from the vertebral canal. It is often confused with the marrow of the leg bones, which is a different tissue and remains ordinary butcher's stock. Anyone reading this entry hoping for a marrow garnish is reading the wrong recipe.
Substitutes are not the pointSweetbreads and brains were given the same crumb-and-fry or butter-saute treatment and are often paired with amourettes in the classical repertoire. Bovine brain is likewise specified risk material above the same age thresholds; thymus and pancreas sweetbreads are not, but if you want them, use a current recipe written for them rather than adapting this one.
Colbert sauceNo. 451 is not reproduced here; in classical usage Colbert is a meat glaze enriched with butter, lemon and chopped tarragon or parsley. On that reading it is entirely usable on its own and belongs with any number of fried or grilled dishes.

A Little History

Amourettes is one of the frankly odd words of classical French kitchen French: literally a little love affair, applied to the spinal cord of veal or beef. Charles Ranhofer, who ran the kitchens at Delmonico's in New York and published The Epicurean in 1894, put it in his chapter of garnishings, the arsenal of small prepared components a nineteenth-century brigade kept ready to dress a large joint or fill out a platter. The double treatment here, half crumbed and fried and half sauteed in butter with fine herbs, is characteristic of that section: contrast of texture and color on the same dish, the labor cost of two preparations being no object in a house of that size. Amourettes appear in Escoffier and in French charcuterie into the twentieth century, most often paired with sweetbreads or in vol-au-vent fillings, and they persisted on European menus until the BSE crisis of the 1990s ended the trade in central nervous tissue almost overnight. The entry now reads as a record of how completely a food category can disappear.