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Calf Brains

A baked dish of calf brains mixed with lemon juice, ketchup, eggs, and seasoned, topped with breadcrumbs and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Calf Brains

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the brains

  1. Soak the brains in salt water for a few minutes.

  2. Remove the outer membrane, wash, and parboil in 1 cup of water for 10 minutes.

Assemble and bake

  1. Cut the brains into pieces and add salt, pepper, lemon juice, ketchup, and finely chopped eggs.

  2. Place the mixture in a baking dish, sprinkle with bread crumbs, and dot with small pieces of butter.

  3. Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) until browned.

Serve

  1. Serve immediately with buttered toast and thin slices of dill pickles.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  4. Lemon + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  5. Pepper + breadtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,964 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Brains
Provide the soft, delicate main body of the dish once parboiled and cut into pieces.
Hard boiled eggs
Add body and a firm, slightly crumbly texture to the mixture.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp, golden-brown topping as the dish bakes.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the topping brown in the oven.

The step that matters

Parboiling the brains. Brains are very delicate and can break apart or turn grainy if overcooked. A gentle, timed parboil firms them enough to cut cleanly while keeping them tender for baking.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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