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Brain Cakes

Brain cakes are small fried patties made from boiled brains mixed with parsley, sage, spices, egg yolk, and cream.

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, then in hot water.

  2. Remove the skin and fibers from the brains.

  3. Boil the brains in salted water for 2-3 minutes.

Make and fry the cakes

  1. Beat the boiled brains in a bowl with parsley, sage, salt, mace, cayenne pepper, egg yolk, and cream.

  2. Drop small cakes of the mixture into a frying pan.

  3. Fry the cakes in butter until they are 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 + sagetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,445 recipes

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

  2. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  3. Sage + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,388 recipes

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

  4. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour 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

Brains
Form the main body of the cakes, giving them their soft, meaty texture.
Egg yolk
Binds the mixture so the cakes hold together when shaped and fried.
Cream
Adds moisture and richness, keeping the cakes tender rather than dry.
Butter
Fries the cakes, promoting browning and a rich flavour on the surface.

The step that matters

Fry the cakes in butter until they are light brown. Frying over moderate heat browns the outside through the Maillard reaction while the soft, moist inside cooks through. Too high a heat scorches the butter and the outside before the centre sets, so keep the heat steady and the cakes turned gently.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Marjoramfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against parsley, sage, pepper, egg, cream, butter, flour. 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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