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Brain Cakes

Small pancakes made from calf brains, egg yolk, parsley, nutmeg, lemon peel, and salt, fried in butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Brain Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash the calf's brains and cook them in water with a little salt.

Make and fry the cakes

  1. Beat the brains with the egg yolk, parsley, salt, nutmeg, and lemon peel.

  2. Fry the mixture like small pancakes in butter until golden brown.

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 + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  2. Parsley + nutmegtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,062 recipes

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

  3. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

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

  4. Parsley + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  5. Nutmeg + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together24,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Calf's brains
Form the main body of the cakes, giving them a soft, tender texture.
Egg yolk
Binds the beaten brains so the mixture holds together while frying.
Butter
Fries the cakes, adding fat and browning them to a golden crust.

The step that matters

Frying the mixture in butter. The cakes are soft and loosely bound, so they can break apart if flipped too early. Wait until the underside is golden brown before turning, and keep the heat moderate so the butter browns the surface without burning.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Dillfits about as well
  4. Nutmegthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, parsley, lemon, butter. 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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