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Fried Brains

A dish of brains fried with butter, seasoned with salt and pepper, topped with eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 118,967 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Fried Brains

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Scald the brains and season with coarse sea salt and black pepper.

  2. Heat butter in a frying pan.

Cook

  1. Add the seasoned brains to the hot butter.

  2. When nearly done, crack 6 eggs into a bowl and pour them into the frying pan with the brains.

  3. Cook for a few minutes, stirring constantly.

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  2. Pepper + buttertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + eggtop 33% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together50,580 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Pepper and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 50,580 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
Provide the main body and soft, delicate texture of the dish.
Eggs
Set as they cook, binding the brains together into a soft, cohesive mass.
Butter
Conducts heat and adds richness, helping the brains brown lightly in the pan.

The step that matters

Adding the eggs when the brains are nearly done. Eggs set quickly with heat. Adding them too early, or cooking too long afterward, can make them dry and rubbery. Constant stirring keeps the egg curds small and tender.

“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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