Name: Brain Cakes on Spinach
Ingredients: calves' brains; bread crumbs; flour; milk; eggs; spinach; cream; coarse sea salt; butter

Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Brain Cakes on Spinach

Ingredients

Directions

Remove any gills from the calves' brains and beat them with bread crumbs.
Fry the mixture in small round cakes using a batter made of flour, milk, and eggs.
Chop the spinach and mix it with cream and a little coarse sea salt.
Place the spinach on a dish and top it with the brain cakes.
Serve with melted butter.

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.

Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,232 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together81,283 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together41,516 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
Flour + spinachtop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,564 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together11,466 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

Swap the spinach

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, flour, milk, egg, cream, butter):

Leekfits better
Potatofits better
Asparagusfits better
Spinachthe original

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