Skip to main content
Main

Calf's Brain Croquette

A fried croquette made from minced calf brains, egg yolk, parsley, salt, pepper, and bread crumbs, coated in egg white and cracker crumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Calf's Brain Croquette

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Prepare the calf's brains for frying.

  2. Mince the brains and mix with the egg yolk, parsley, salt, pepper, and bread crumbs.

  3. Form the mixture into small balls.

Coat and fry

  1. Roll the balls in the beaten egg white, then in cracker crumbs.

  2. Fry in boiling lard until golden 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 + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Parsley + breadtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,588 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Pepper + breadtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,964 recipes

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

  5. Egg + parsleytop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,765 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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 soft, tender body of the croquettes.
Egg yolk
Binds the minced mixture so the balls hold their shape.
Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and add body to the mixture.
Egg white
Gives the cracker crumb coating a base to stick to.
Cracker crumbs
Form a crisp, browning outer crust when fried.

The step that matters

Fry in boiling lard until golden brown. The lard must be hot enough to crisp the coating quickly. If it is too cool, the croquettes absorb fat and turn greasy, and the interior may not set before the outside over-browns.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Parsleythe original
  2. Nutmegfits about as well
  3. Marjoramfits less well
  4. Sagefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, pepper, bread. 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.

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipesBread OmeletteBread Omelette60 recipesOatmeal BreadOatmeal Bread51 recipes