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Brain Cakes

Brain Cakes are fried balls made from boiled brains, sage, mace, cayenne, salt, pepper, eggs, and bread crumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Sage and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,388 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Brain Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the brains

  1. Soak the brains.

  2. Pick the brains.

  3. Boil the brains for 15 minutes.

  4. Blanch the brains.

Shape the cakes

  1. Pound the brains to a paste with sage, mace, cayenne, salt, pepper, and beaten eggs.

  2. Form the mixture into balls about the size of a coin.

  3. Flatten the balls.

  4. Dip the flattened cakes into egg.

  5. Coat the cakes with fine bread crumbs.

Fry

  1. Fry in hot oil until golden 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. Sage + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,388 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

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

  3. Sage + macetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together519 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  4. Sage + breadtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,778 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Mace + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,257 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

Mace and pepper barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,257 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, setting into a soft, tender paste when cooked.
Eggs
Bind the paste together and coat the cakes so they hold their shape.
Fine bread crumbs
Form a crisp, golden coating that browns when fried.

The step that matters

Fry in hot oil until golden brown. Oil that is not hot enough lets the coated cakes soak up grease and fall apart, while overheating browns the crumbs before the centre is cooked. Steady heat gives a crisp crust and a fully cooked interior.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sage, pepper, egg, bread. 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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