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.
