Skip to main content
Main

To Make Brain Cakes

Brain Cakes are fried patties made from ground brains, eggs, breadcrumbs, parsley, pepper, salt, flour, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

To Make Brain Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Clear the brains of strings and skin.

Make the cakes

  1. Mix the brains with egg yolks, bread crumbs, parsley, pepper, salt, flour, and cream until smooth.

  2. Drop spoonfuls of the mixture, about the size of a small sugar biscuit, into hot oil.

  3. Fry until light brown.

Serve

  1. Garnish with sliced orange.

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. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Parsley + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  4. Bread + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,588 recipes

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

  5. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Egg and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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 cake, giving it a soft, rich interior.
Egg yolks
Bind the mixture and help it set firm when fried.
Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and add body so the cakes hold their shape.
Flour
Adds structure and helps the cakes hold together in the hot oil.
Cream
Adds moisture and softness to the mixture.

The step that matters

Dropping the mixture into hot oil. The mixture is soft and loose, so if the oil is not hot enough the cakes will absorb grease and fall apart. Hot oil sets the outside quickly, forming a crust that holds the cake together while the inside cooks.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Parsleythe original
  3. Turmericfits about as well
  4. Tarragonfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, bread, pepper, flour, cream. 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

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipesBread OmeletteBread Omelette60 recipesOatmeal BreadOatmeal Bread51 recipes