Skip to main content
Main

Ioo Home Pork Making

A dish of cooked pork brains seasoned with pepper, salt, butter, egg, and sage.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Pepper and sage 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 ↓

Ioo Home Pork Making

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the brains

  1. Cook the brains in a small quantity of water for 30 minutes, then drain the water.

Season and finish

  1. Add pepper, salt, butter, and beaten egg to the brains.

  2. Cook until the egg thickens.

  3. Alternatively, season the cooked brains with salt, pepper, and sage.

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. Pepper + sagetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,388 recipes

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

  2. Butter + sagetop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,312 recipes

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

  3. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Pepper + buttertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

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

  5. Egg + sagetop 32% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,100 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

What each ingredient does

Brains
The main ingredient, which cooks to a soft, delicate texture.
Egg
Sets when heated, thickening the mixture and binding it together.
Butter
Adds richness and a rounded, savoury fat flavour.
Sage
Adds a fragrant, herbal aroma to the brains.

The step that matters

Cook until the egg thickens. Egg proteins set as they heat, which thickens the mixture. If the heat is too high or the cooking runs too long, the proteins tighten too far, squeeze out liquid and turn grainy or curdled. Cook gently and stop once the mixture thickens.

Swap the sage

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

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Tarragonfits about as well
  4. Sagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, butter, egg. 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.

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesYorkshire PuddingYorkshire Pudding264 recipes