Why it works: Butter and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 118,967 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓
Brain Cakes
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare
Parboil the brains until tender.
Mix the parboiled brains with suet or butter, breadcrumbs, and seasoning.
Bind the mixture with the beaten egg.
Form the mixture into small cakes.
Fry
Fry the cakes in egg and breadcrumbs until golden brown.
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.
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Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together118,967 recipes
Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Brains
- Provide the main body and rich flavour of the cakes.
- Suet or butter
- Adds fat for richness and moisture in the cakes.
- Breadcrumbs
- Absorb moisture and give the cakes body and a crisp coating.
- Egg
- Binds the mixture together so the cakes hold their shape.
The step that matters
Binding the mixture with the beaten egg. Too little egg leaves the cakes crumbly and likely to fall apart in the pan, while the egg's proteins set during frying to hold the shape together.
“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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