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.
Home › The World's Kitchen › Shirred Eggs with Calf's Brains
Shirred Eggs with Calf's Brains
Procure a very fresh calf's brain, plunge in cold water for five minutes. Carefully remove all fibres, then place in a saucepan with a pint water, a teaspoon salt, a tablespoon vinegar and one sprig of bay leaf; boil for five minutes, then drain. Cut the brain into twelve even slices. Lightly butter six shirred-egg dishes, carefully crack two fresh eggs into each dish; season with half teaspoon salt and two saltspoons white pepper evenly divided over the twelve eggs. Place two slices of calf's brain in each dish, then set in the oven for three minutes. Remove, lightly brown an ounce of butter in a small frying pan, add one tablespoon vinegar and half teaspoon freshly chopped parsley; mix a little, pour over the eggs evenly and serve.
This is a straightforward French egg dish in structure, but the central ingredient places it outside what can responsibly be cooked today. The notes below explain the specific hazards rather than adapt the method.
- The brain is the problemBovine central nervous tissue — brain and spinal cord — is classed as specified risk material because it can carry the prions responsible for bovine spongiform encephalopathy, linked to variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease in humans. The disease is fatal and untreatable, and in many countries the sale of cattle brain for food is restricted or prohibited outright.
- Cooking does not helpPrions are not conventional pathogens. The five-minute simmer in acidulated water here, and the three further minutes in the oven, are irrelevant to them: prions survive boiling, standard roasting temperatures and ordinary disinfectants. No home cooking time or temperature makes this tissue safe.
- The eggs are also undercookedTwo eggs per dish given only three minutes in an oven of unstated heat are unlikely to set; both white and yolk would probably still be loose. Even setting the brain aside, that is effectively a raw-egg dish by modern standards, and one presented without any indication of oven temperature.
- No oven temperature is givenThe original assumes the cook knows the range for shirred eggs. That omission compounds the problem: there is no way to reconstruct the intended doneness of either the eggs or the reheated brain slices from the text.
- SaltspoonA saltspoon is a quarter teaspoon, so two saltspoons of white pepper is half a teaspoon spread across twelve eggs. Worth knowing when reading other recipes in this book.
- Shirred-egg dishesThese are small shallow individual gratin dishes, usually earthenware or porcelain, holding two eggs each. The recipe as written serves six.
- If you want the dish this resemblesStrip out the brains and what remains is eggs baked in butter finished with browned butter sharpened with vinegar and parsley — the recipe's 'lightly brown' puts it closer to beurre noisette than to a fully darkened beurre noir. For that, use a current recipe with a stated oven temperature and cook the eggs to a set white.
Shirred eggs — oeufs sur le plat — baked in individual buttered dishes were a standard of the French breakfast and light-supper repertoire, and this book pairs them, as such recipes often were, with a garnish. Calf's brains were an ordinary and inexpensive part of the offal trade well into the twentieth century, usually blanched in acidulated water as here, then sliced and either fried, sauced or served with browned butter. The beurre noir finish, butter cooked dark and cut with vinegar, is the classic French accompaniment to brains and to skate, and its sharpness was meant to offset the tissue's richness. The recipe reads as entirely unremarkable for its date; the reason it now carries a warning is the recognition of BSE in British cattle in the 1980s and the subsequent identification of variant CJD in humans, which ended the casual sale of bovine brain in most of the West.