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Cervelles Frites, Ou En Beignets

Cervelles Frites, ou en Beignets, is a dish of fried beef brains served with a sauce of onions, flour, wine or vinegar, and broth.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Beef and mushroom are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,232 recipes. Both carry 2,4-nonadienal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Cervelles Frites, Ou En Beignets

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Roast small onions in a saucepan until they are nicely colored.

  2. Add flour and moisten with white wine or a mixture of white vinegar and water.

  3. Once the sauce is a light yellow, add water or broth and stir well.

  4. Taste the sauce to ensure it is well seasoned.

Cook and serve

  1. Add the cleaned beef brains and mushrooms, if using.

  2. Cook for 15 minutes, then serve the brains topped with the sauce.

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. Beef + mushroomtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  2. White wine + mushroomtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,765 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity).

  3. Onion + beeftop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Onion + mushroomtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,626 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Onion + white winetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,535 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Thickens the sauce as it cooks with the liquid.
White wine or white vinegar and water
Adds acidity and moisture that loosens the flour and onion base into a sauce.
Beef brains
Main ingredient, cooked gently in the sauce until tender.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, white wine, beef, mushroom):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Chivefits about as well
  3. Leekfits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, white wine, beef, mushroom. 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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