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Brain Toast

Brains cooked with water, salt, vinegar, egg yolks, cayenne pepper, lemon juice, butter, served on fried bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Brain Toast

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the brains

  1. Soak the brains for 15 minutes after removing the skin and fiber.

  2. Drop the brains into boiling water with salt and vinegar.

  3. Boil the brains for 10 minutes.

  4. Transfer the brains to cold water until cool.

Make the mixture

  1. Stir in the egg yolks, cayenne pepper, salt, and lemon juice.

  2. Heat the butter until boiling.

  3. Pour the hot butter into the mixture.

  4. Stir quickly for about 10 minutes.

Serve

  1. Heap the mixture on long, thin pieces of fried bread.

  2. Heat in the oven.

  3. Serve hot on a doily.

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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Vinegar + peppertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

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

  5. Lemon + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

What each ingredient does

Brains
Forms the soft, rich main body of the spread once cooked and mashed.
Egg yolks
Thicken and bind the mixture as they cook gently with the warm butter.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, giving the mixture a smooth, silky texture.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich brains and butter.

The step that matters

Stirring the hot butter into the egg yolks. Egg yolks can scramble or curdle if they meet very hot fat without constant stirring. Pouring the butter in slowly and stirring quickly for the full time keeps the mixture smooth and evenly thickened.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Figfits about as well
  3. Plumfits about as well
  4. Cherryfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, egg, pepper, butter, bread. 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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