Calf's brains, or cervelle de veau, is a traditional delicacy in Europe and Morocco. It is the brain of a calf consumed as meat. It is often served with tongue, sauteed with beurre noir and capers, or mixed with scrambled eggs (a traditional breakfast dish in the United States).
In Italy cervella fritte is a popular dish made of bite-sized batter-fried morsels of beef brain.
Beef brains have a mushy texture and very little inherent flavor and are typically flavored with sauces such as chile sauce and Sauce ravigote. The consumption of beef brains and spines is restricted in many locales because humans may contract Bovine spongiform encephalopathy (commonly known as mad-cow disease), by eating the nervous tissue of diseased animals. Still, there have been few such cases in areas where bovine spine and brains are eaten.
Famous quotes containing the words calf and/or brains:
“The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid; and the calf and the young lion and a little child shall lead them.”
—Bible: Hebrew, Isaiah 11:6.
“Modern civilization has bred a race with brains like those of rabbits and we who are the heirs of the witch-doctor and the voodoo. We artists who have been so long the despised are about to take over control.”
—Ezra Pound (1885–1972)