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Brain Cakes

Brain cakes are fried cakes made from cleaned brains, flour, spices, and an egg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 13,015 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Brain Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the brains

  1. Clean the brains in cold water.

  2. Boil and pound the brains.

Shape the cakes

  1. Add flour, nutmeg, pepper, salt, and the raw egg; mix well.

  2. Roll out the mixture like pie crust to ¼ inch thick.

  3. Cut into round cakes.

Fry

  1. Fry in ghee or lard until light brown.

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. Nutmeg + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Nutmeg + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together24,744 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  5. Flour + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Brains
Form the main body of the cakes, giving them a soft, rich texture once pounded.
Raw egg
Binds the pounded brains so the mixture holds together when rolled and cut.
Flour
Adds body to the mixture so the cakes keep their shape while frying.

The step that matters

Rolling to ¼ inch thickness. If the mixture is rolled unevenly or too thick, the centre may stay soft while the outside over-browns in the fat. Even thickness lets the cakes cook through at the same rate.

Swap the nutmeg

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, pepper, egg, ghee):

  1. Turmericfits better
  2. Cardamomfits better
  3. Nutmegthe original
  4. Cinnamonfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, pepper, egg, ghee. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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