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Brain Cakes

Brain Cakes are a savory dish of boiled brains mixed with flour, butter, breadcrumbs, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and sage match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,445 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Brain Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the brains

  1. Wash the brains in cold water to remove impurities.

  2. Place the washed brains in a stewpan, cover with cold water, and add ¼ teaspoon salt and 2 sage leaves.

  3. Bring the liquid to a boil, skim well, and reduce heat to simmer for 10 minutes.

  4. Remove the brains to a plate and let them cool.

  5. Cut the cooled brains into small pieces.

Make the sauce

  1. Chop the parsley finely until you have about ½ teaspoon.

  2. Rub the bread through a sieve to obtain about 3 oz of bread crumbs.

  3. Melt 1 oz of butter in a stewpan.

  4. Stir in 3 oz of flour.

  5. Add ½ cup of cold water and ½ teaspoon of chopped parsley; stir until the mixture boils and thickens.

Finish and bind

  1. Add 2 oz of bread crumbs and the chopped brains to the sauce.

  2. Grate nutmeg over the mixture and season with pepper and salt to taste.

  3. Add the yolk of 1 egg to the mixture and stir well.

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 + sagetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,445 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  3. Sage + nutmegtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together642 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Pepper + sagetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,388 recipes

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

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 soft, rich texture of the cakes.
Flour
Thickens the butter and water into a sauce that holds the mixture together.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, and helps form the roux with the flour.
Bread crumbs
Absorb liquid and add body, giving the mixture a firmer, less wet texture.
Eggs
The yolk enriches the mixture and helps bind it together.

The step that matters

Stir in the flour and water until thickened. Cooking the flour in melted butter before adding liquid lets the starch swell evenly into a smooth sauce. Adding the liquid too fast or skipping the stirring can leave lumps or a thin, uneven base that won't bind the brains properly.

Swap the sage

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

  1. Marjoramfits about as well
  2. Cinnamonfits about as well
  3. Thymefits about as well
  4. Sagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, butter, pepper, parsley, egg, bread, nutmeg. 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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