Herb-Flavored Fresh Cheese

This Lyonnaise dish is named after silk workers—canuts—who worked in Lyons’s silk factories before the Second World War. A cervelle is a brain, and the culinary term cervelle refers to animal brains used as food. Fromage frais, the base for cervelle de canut, has a texture vaguely reminiscent of calves’ brains, and this may explain the use of cervelle in the name of the dish.

In any case, cervelle de canut is a close relative to our American sour-cream-and-onion dip, the only signif