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Another Receipt for Brain Cakes

Brain cakes are fried diced brains coated in egg yolk, breadcrumbs, salt, spices, and herbs, served in soup or hash.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Egg and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 22,662 recipes. Both carry (e)-2-octenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Another Receipt for Brain Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the brains

  1. Boil the brains in veal gravy very gently for 10 minutes.

  2. Drain the brains on a sieve and let them cool.

  3. Cut the cooled brains into thick dice.

Coat and fry

  1. Dip the diced brains into the beaten egg yolk, then into the fine bread crumbs mixed with salt, spices, and herbs.

  2. Fry the coated brains until light brown, then drain and dry them.

Serve

  1. Add the fried brains to soup or hash before serving.

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

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

  2. Veal + breadtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,056 recipes

    Shared aroma: cis-3-hexenol (green, grassy).

  3. Veal + eggtop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,845 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, 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, becoming tender when gently simmered and then fried.
Beaten egg yolk
Acts as a binder so the bread crumb coating sticks to the diced brains.
Fine bread crumbs
Form a crisp, golden-brown coating when the brains are fried.

The step that matters

Fry the coated brains until light brown. Frying too hot or too long can scorch the crumb coating before the inside is heated through, while too little heat leaves it greasy and soft. Drying them afterward keeps the coating crisp rather than steamed.

“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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