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Cervelles De Veau En Marinade

Calf's brains coated in a flour paste and fried.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Cervelles De Veau En Marinade

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Clean the calf's brains thoroughly.

Make the batter

  1. Make a paste with flour and lukewarm water, then melt in the butter and season with salt.

  2. Add the whipped eggs to the paste.

Fry and serve

  1. Cut the brains into four pieces, dip each piece in the paste, and fry until golden brown.

  2. Serve garnished with fried parsley.

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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + parsleytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  4. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Calf's brains
Forms the main filling and is the body of the dish that gets fried.
Flour
Forms the paste with water that coats the brains and sets into a crisp layer when fried.
Eggs
Thicken the paste and add structure and richness to the coating.
Butter
Adds fat and flavour to the paste.

The step that matters

Frying the coated brains. The paste must be fully coated and the oil hot enough so the coating browns and crisps quickly. Oil that is too cool lets the batter soak up grease and stay soft, while overcooking dries the brains.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Jalapenofits about as well
  4. Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, butter, egg. 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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