Beef brain

{{short description|Cattle brain as food}}

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Beef brains and veal (juvenile beef) or calf's brains are used in the cuisines of France; Italy; Spain; El Salvador; Mexico, etc. where they are called sesos in Spanish and are eaten in tacos and quesadillas; Pakistan and Bangladesh also in parts of India like Kolkata and Kerala, where they are known in Urdu and Bengali as Maghaz; Portugal; Egypt, where they are eaten fried and Indonesia.

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.{{cite book|title=The Grocer's Encyclopedia|url=https://archive.org/details/grocersencyclope00ward|first=Artemas|last=Ward|year=1911|location=New York}} It is often served with tongue, sauteed with beurre noir and capers, or mixed with scrambled eggs. In Italy, cervella fritte is a popular dish made of bite-sized batter-fried morsels of beef brain.

Outbreaks of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE, commonly known as mad-cow disease) led to legislation to reduce risks of contracting the human variant of the illness by consumption of beef brains and spines.{{cite web |title=The Basics of Mad Cow Disease |url=https://www.webmd.com/brain/mad-cow-disease-basics#1 |website=WebMD |publisher=WebMD LLC |access-date=26 June 2018}}{{cite web |last1=Arthur |first1=Charles |title=The BSE Risk: to eat or not to eat- the facts behind the disease |url=https://www.independent.co.uk/news/the-bse-risk-to-eat-or-not-to-eat-the-facts-behind-the-disease-1343133.html |website=The Independent |access-date=26 June 2018 |date=21 March 1996}}