Beef brains and veal or calf's brains

Calf's brains

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 ....

 are used in the cuisines of France

French cuisine

French cuisine is a style of food preparation originating from France that has developed from centuries of social change. In the Middle Ages, Guillaume Tirel , a court chef, authored Le Viandier, one of the earliest recipe collections of Medieval France...

; Italy

Italian cuisine

Italian cuisine has developed through centuries of social and political changes, with roots as far back as the 4th century BCE. Italian cuisine in itself takes heavy influences, including Etruscan, ancient Greek, ancient Roman, Byzantine, Jewish and Arab cuisines...

; El Salvador

El Salvador

El Salvador or simply Salvador is the smallest and the most densely populated country in Central America. The country's capital city and largest city is San Salvador; Santa Ana and San Miguel are also important cultural and commercial centers in the country and in all of Central America...

; Mexico

Mexican cuisine

Mexican cuisine, a style of food that originates in Mexico, is known for its varied flavors, colourful decoration and variety of spices and ingredients, most of which are native to the country. The cuisine of Mexico has evolved through thousands of years of blending indigenous cultures, with later...

, etc. where they are called sesos in Spanish

Spanish language

Spanish , also known as Castilian , is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several languages and dialects in central-northern Iberia around the 9th century and gradually spread with the expansion of the Kingdom of Castile into central and southern Iberia during the...

 and are eaten in taco

Taco

A taco is a traditional Mexican dish composed of a corn or wheat tortilla folded or rolled around a filling. A taco can be made with a variety of fillings, including beef, chicken, seafood, vegetables and cheese, allowing for great versatility and variety...

s and quesadillas; Pakistan, where they are known in Urdu

Urdu

Urdu is a register of the Hindustani language that is identified with Muslims in South Asia. It belongs to the Indo-European family. Urdu is the national language and lingua franca of Pakistan. It is also widely spoken in some regions of India, where it is one of the 22 scheduled languages and an...

 as Maghaz; Portugal

Portuguese cuisine

Portuguese cuisine is characterised by rich, filling and full-flavored dishes and is closely related to Mediterranean cuisine. The influence of Portugal's former colonial possessions is also notable, especially in the wide variety of spices used. These spices include piri piri and black pepper, as...

; Indonesia; and in the United States

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

, especially in St. Louis, Missouri

St. Louis, Missouri

St. Louis is an independent city on the eastern border of Missouri, United States. With a population of 319,294, it was the 58th-largest U.S. city at the 2010 U.S. Census. The Greater St...

, and the Ohio River valley.

In Italy

Italy

Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...

 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

Salsa (sauce)

Salsa may refer to any type of sauce. In American English, it usually refers to the spicy, often tomato based, hot sauces typical of Mexican and Central American cuisine, particularly those used as dips. In British English, the word typically refers to salsa cruda, which is common in Mexican ,...

 and Sauce ravigote

Sauce ravigote

Sauce ravigote is a classic, lightly acidic sauce in French cuisine, which may be prepared either warm or cold. The warm sauce is based upon velouté, cut with white wine vinegar, though not classically with Dijon mustard as it is universally nowadays, and the cold is a vinaigrette based on a meat...

. The consumption of beef brains and spines is restricted in many locales because humans may contract Bovine spongiform encephalopathy

Bovine spongiform encephalopathy

Bovine spongiform encephalopathy , commonly known as mad-cow disease, is a fatal neurodegenerative disease in cattle that causes a spongy degeneration in the brain and spinal cord. BSE has a long incubation period, about 30 months to 8 years, usually affecting adult cattle at a peak age onset of...

 (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.

See also

• Fried-brain sandwich
  Fried-brain sandwich
  A fried-brain sandwich is generally a sandwich with sliced calves' brains on sliced bread. Thinly sliced fried slabs on white toast became ubiquitous on menus in St. Louis, Missouri, after the rise of the city's stockyards in the late 1880s, although demand there has so dwindled that only a handful...
  
  
• Eggs and brains
  Eggs and brains
  Eggs 'n' brains is a breakfast meal consisting of pork brains and scrambled eggs. It is a dish of the Portuguese cuisine known as Omolete de Mioleira...
  
  
• Cabeza
  Cabeza
  Cabeza, sometimes cabeça, is a Spanish word meaning "head". In Mexican cuisine, it is used to describe the meat from a roasted head of a cow, served as a taco or burrito filling....