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Philadelphia Scrapple

A savory loaf made from pork, calf's liver, leaf lard, salt, pepper, herbs, and a flour-cornmeal mixture.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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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

Make the base

  1. Place the pork, calf's liver, and leaf lard in cold water and boil until tender.

  2. Chop the meat finely and mix in the salt, pepper, and herbs.

  3. Return the mixture to the kettle and thicken with equal parts buckwheat flour and cornmeal.

Set and fry

  1. Rinse a pan with cold water, pour in the mixture, and let it cool.

  2. Once cooled, slice and fry the scrapple.

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. Buckwheat + flourtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together660 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  4. Sage + buckwheattop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Lean raw pork shoulder
Provides the main meat body and savory flavor of the loaf.
Calf's liver
Adds richness and depth of flavor to the meat mixture.
Leaf lard
Adds fat, giving moisture and a rich mouthfeel to the loaf.
Buckwheat flour and cornmeal
Thicken the cooking liquid so the mixture sets firm enough to slice.

The step that matters

Cooling the mixture before slicing. The thickened mixture must cool fully in the pan so starches and gelatin can set; slicing too early causes it to crumble or fall apart in the pan.

Swap the buckwheat

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

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Buckwheatthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, liver, pepper, sage, 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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