Skip to main content
Main

Philadelphia Scrapple

A pork-based dish made with cornmeal, spices, and boiled pork scraps, then cooled, sliced, and fried.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Pepper and sage match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,388 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Philadelphia Scrapple

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the pork

  1. Split the pork head, remove the tongue, snout end, jawbone, eyes, and nasal cavities.

  2. Clean the ears and remove cartilage after boiling.

  3. Boil the head meat and skin in enough water to cover for 15 minutes.

  4. Add the other meat and boil until it separates from the bones.

  5. Chop the meat finely and strain the liquid to remove small bones.

Make the mush

  1. Add enough water to the liquid to make 5 parts liquid to 3 parts meat.

  2. Bring to a boil, then stir in the cornmeal.

  3. Stir while boiling and season with salt, black and red pepper, and your choice of herbs.

  4. Boil for 15 to 20 minutes.

Set and fry

  1. Pour into pans and cool in a cold place for 2 to 3 weeks.

  2. Cut into 1-inch thick slices and fry in a very hot pan until browned on both sides.

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. Pepper + sagetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,388 recipes

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

  2. Pork + livertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,606 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-nonanal (fatty, waxy).

  3. Pork + meattop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,208 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  4. Pork + sagetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,527 recipes

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

  5. Liver + sagetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together229 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1,8-cineol (eucalyptus, camphor).

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

What each ingredient does

Pork scraps
Supply the meat and fat that give scrapple its savory flavor and body.
Cornmeal
Thickens the cooking liquid so it sets into a firm loaf that can be sliced.
Water
Makes up the cooking liquid that the cornmeal thickens.

The step that matters

Stir while the cornmeal goes in. Cornmeal added to boiling liquid can clump and scorch if not stirred constantly, and it must be cooked through to thicken properly and set firm when cooled.

Swap the sage

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pork, meat, ham, liver, pepper):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Sagethe original
  3. Marjoramfits about as well
  4. Parsleyfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, meat, ham, liver, pepper. 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.

More scrapple recipes

Philadelphia 4 See all 32 →

You might also like

Pork CakePork Cake107 recipesRoast PorkRoast Pork82 recipesMeat CroquettesMeat Croquettes52 recipesMeatballsMeatballs37 recipes