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Brains with Chopped Celery

A dish of boiled and fried pig or veal brains served with celery mixed with mayonnaise.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon 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 ↓

Brains with Chopped Celery

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the brains

  1. Soak the brains in water until clean and remove any fibers.

  2. Boil the brains with lemon juice, salt, and red pepper for 5 minutes.

  3. Remove the brains and let them cool, then slice in half.

Fry and serve

  1. Dip the slices into a batter made of flour, milk, and egg.

  2. Fry in boiling fat until golden brown.

  3. Serve with celery mixed with mayonnaise.

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 + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Celery + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,467 recipes

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

  3. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

  4. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

Milk and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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 dish, becoming tender when simmered and then fried.
Flour
Forms the batter that coats the slices and crisps into a golden crust when fried.
Milk
Thins the batter so it coats the brain slices evenly.
Egg
Binds the batter so it adheres to the slices and sets when fried.
Mayonnaise
Adds fat and creaminess to the celery served alongside the fried brains.
Celery
Adds a crisp, fresh texture that contrasts with the rich fried brains.

The step that matters

Frying in boiling fat until golden brown. Fat must be hot enough to set the batter quickly; if it is too cool, the coating soaks up oil and turns greasy instead of crisp and golden.

Swap the celery

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

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, veal, milk, pepper, lemon, flour. 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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