Skip to main content
Main

Brain Cakes on Spinach

Brain cakes made from calves’ brains, bread crumbs, flour, milk, eggs, served atop chopped spinach with cream, salt, and melted butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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

Prepare the cakes

  1. Beat the calves’ brains with the bread crumbs.

  2. Fry the mixture into small round cakes using a batter of flour, milk, and eggs.

Prepare the spinach

  1. Chop the spinach and mix it with cream and salt.

  2. Place the chopped spinach on a dish.

  3. Top the spinach with the brain cakes.

  4. 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.

  1. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Flour + spinachtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,564 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. 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

What each ingredient does

Calves’ brains
Form the main body of the cakes, giving them a soft, meaty texture.
Bread crumbs
Bind the brains so the mixture holds together when shaped and fried.
Flour
Forms the batter with milk and eggs, helping the cakes set and brown when fried.
Eggs
Bind the batter and help it set, giving the fried cakes structure.
Spinach
Provides a green, slightly earthy base that the cakes rest on.
Cream
Adds richness and moisture to the spinach, softening its texture.

The step that matters

Fry the mixture into small round cakes. The batter must be thin enough to coat the mixture yet thick enough to set, so the cakes stay together and brown evenly in the fat rather than falling apart or steaming.

Swap the spinach

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

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. 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.

“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