EVANSVILLE, Ind. - Fear of mad cow
disease hasn't kept Cecelia Coan from eating her beloved deep-fried
cow brain sandwiches.
She's more concerned about what the cholesterol will do to her
heart than suffering the brain-wasting disease found in a cow in
Washington state.
"I think I'll have hardening of the arteries before I have mad
cow disease," said Cecelia Coan, 40, picking up a brain sandwich to
go at the Hilltop Inn during her lunch hour. "This is better than
snail, better than sushi, better than a lot of different
delicacies."
The brains, battered with egg, seasoning and flour, puff up when
cooked. They are served hot, heaping outside the bun.
They are traced back to a time when southern Indiana newcomers
from Germany and Holland wasted little. Some families have their own
recipes passed down over the generations.
A little mad cow hysteria won't scare this crowd, said Coan, a
bank teller who likes her brain sandwich served with mustard and
pickled onions.
"You're going to die anyway. Either die happy or you die
miserable. That's the German attitude, isn't it?" Coan said.
The local delicacy is served at area German-heritage restaurants
like the Hilltop Inn, a former stagecoach stop in the Ohio River
city that opened in 1837. They're also popular at annual festivities
like Evansville's fall festival, where they typically sell out early
at church booths.
The only thing that will stop many of the sandwich's fans from
buying them is its availability. New rules from the U.S. Department
of Agriculture (news
- web
sites)'s Food Safety and Inspection Service will ban selling
brains of cattle 30 months or older.
The 30-month cutoff is used because the incubation period for
cattle to develop the disease is many months to many years, said
Denise Derrer, spokeswoman for the Indiana State Board of Animal
Health.
But some Evansville-area meat suppliers, such as Dewig Brothers
Meats in Haubstadt, have stopped selling the cow brains completely.
Since it opened in 1916, the supplier had saved the brains to sell
to individuals and restaurants. The going price was from $1.50 to $2
a pound.
The decision means customers will have to switch to pork brains,
which they tend to not like as much because they are smaller and
more difficult to work with, owner Tom Dewig said.
Consumers, however, are not likely to tell the difference.
"The taste is really carried in the batter," Dewig said.
Although some people consider eating cow brain an area novelty,
it is not just limited to Indiana, Dewig said.
In California, in cities such as Stockton, cow brain is commonly
sold as taco filling and sold from trucks. They are referred to by
their Spanish name, "sesos."
In Texas border towns, barbacoa, made from the cow's head and
brain, is served during the holidays.
Across the Ohio River in Kentucky, eating squirrel brain served
with fried eggs was once considered a rural delicacy in some parts.
Its popularity declined, however, after researchers in 1997 found a
possible link between eating squirrel brains and contracting mad
cow.
Mad cow disease, or bovine spongiform encephalopathy, eats holes
in the brains of cattle and is incurable. Humans can develop a
brain-wasting illness, variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (news
- web
sites), from consuming contaminated beef products.
Federal officials said after the case of mad cow was detected
Dec. 23 in Washington state that the meat supply was safe.
The cow brains would have to be cooked to about 1,200 degrees to
kill the rogue proteins called prions that cause the disease, said
Derrer of Indiana's animal health board. That temperature is more
than double that of deep frying.
It will take more than one case of mad cow disease, however, to
keep Nick Morrow, a 45-year-old pipefitter from Evansville, from
eating the brain sandwiches he's enjoyed since a child.
Morrow talked his buddy, Scott Moore, into eating at the Hilltop
Inn just so he could have one.
Mad cow disease was far from his mind.
"Well, I haven't won the lottery yet, so I don't figure I'll get
that," Moore said as a hot cow brain sandwich cut in half sat on a
plate before him.