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Dessert

Brain Cakes

Brain cakes are small fried cakes made from boiled brains mixed with herbs, salt, pepper, egg, and optional flour or lemon zest.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 the brains

  1. Wash and soak the brains in cold water, then in hot water.

  2. Remove the skin and large fibers from the brains.

  3. Boil the brains in slightly salted water for 2 to 3 minutes.

Make and fry the cakes

  1. Beat the brains with sage, parsley, salt, mace, white pepper or cayenne, and the egg.

  2. Form the mixture into small cakes.

  3. Fry the cakes in hot oil until they are a fine light 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. Sage + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,445 recipes

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

  3. Sage + lemontop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together887 recipes

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

  4. Mace + white peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,695 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

  5. Parsley + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Brains
Form the main body of the cakes, giving them their soft, rich texture.
Egg
Binds the beaten mixture so the cakes hold their shape while frying.
Sage
Adds a warm, earthy aroma that flavors the mild brains.

The step that matters

Fry the cakes until fine light brown. Frying over high heat browns the surface through the Maillard reaction, creating flavor and a crisp outer layer. Too little heat leaves the cakes pale and greasy; too much burns the outside before the centre sets.

“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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