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Creamed Brains

Cremed brains are brains cooked in salted water, cut into pieces, mixed with cream sauce, topped with cracker crumbs, and baked.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and sauce are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,787 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Creamed Brains

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the brains

  1. Cook the brains in cold, salted water until tender.

  2. Plunge the brains into cold water to harden.

Assemble and bake

  1. Cut the brains into small pieces and mix with cream sauce.

  2. Place the mixture in ramekins and sprinkle with cracker crumbs.

  3. Brown in the oven at 400°F (200°C) and serve hot.

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. Cream + saucetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,787 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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, delicate texture of the dish.
Cream sauce
Adds moisture and richness so the mixture stays soft when baked.
Cracker crumbs
Form a crisp, golden topping through browning in the oven.

The step that matters

Plunge the brains into cold water to harden. Brains are very delicate and break apart easily when handled. Chilling after cooking firms their texture, which makes them easier to cut into clean, even pieces that hold their shape in the sauce.

“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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