SC - Re: Lombard Rice (fwd)

[Philip & Susan Troy]

Mark Schuldenfrei wrote:

>   While the first line of the original recipe mentions both sausage and
>   egg yolks, I have omitted both. I couldn't decide what would be an
>   appropriate substitution for cervellate (brain sausage--apparently it
>   is available, just not locally)

While cervelles, in culinary French, are indeed brains, I'm almost
positive that cervellate is not brain sausage. It is what they call a
boiling sausage, similar to a cotechino, usually made from a mixture of
pork and veal. There are still several Italian varieties of a sausage
called cervellato available, not to mention saveloy, the French
equivalent. Mostly they're along the lines of a cotto (rather than Genoa
or hard) salami. I suspect, based on some of the (admittedly modern)
recipes I've seen, that the sausage mixture was formed into a ball,
wrapped in some kind of wrinkly membrane like caul fat or calves' tripe,
tied up with string, and boiled, the whole thing looking vaguely
brainlike.

If you've ever seen a zampone, which is an Italian specialty (I've
forgotten the region if I ever knew) consisting of a boneless pig's foot
and hock, kinda like a lady's evening glove, stuffed with sausage meat
and smoked/air dried. The stuff inside is cervellato.

This being one of the few topics the Larousse Gastronomique is pretty
reliable on, you could probably get more info there.

Adamantius
______________________________________
Phil & Susan Troy
troy at asan.com
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