Name: Pennsylvania Scrapple
Ingredients: heads, skins, neck pieces, tongues and livers of corn-fed pork; water; coarse sea salt; black pepper; sage or sweet marjoram; cornmeal

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 ↓

Pennsylvania Scrapple

Ingredients

Directions

Clean and soak the bloody pieces in tepid salt water for 2-3 hours.
Boil the pork parts in enough water to cover them until the bones fall off.
Drain the soup through a colander and chop the meat as for sausage.
Thicken the soup with cornmeal until it is stiff enough for a spoon to stand up in it.
Cook until the raw taste of the cornmeal is gone, then add the chopped meat and season with salt, pepper, and sage or marjoram.
Pour the mixture into pans to cool, then cut into slices.
Brown the slices on both sides and serve with ketchup.

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.

Pepper + sagetop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together5,388 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Liver + porktop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,606 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-nonanal (fatty, waxy).
Corn + porktop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,069 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Corn + peppertop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together5,324 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Pork + sagetop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,527 recipes

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