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Pork Cheese

A preserved pork meat cheese made by boiling, seasoning, pressing, and curing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Sage and marjoram match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 507 recipes. Both carry 2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

Pork Cheese

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the pork

  1. Remove the skin from the pork pieces.

  2. Boil the pork until tender and easily stripped from the bones.

Season and press

  1. Chop the meat finely and season with salt, black pepper, and beaten cloves if desired.

  2. Add minced sage and sweet marjoram, mixing everything well with your hands.

  3. Press the mixture into deep pans with straight sides, using a plate to compact it and placing a heavy weight on top.

  4. Let it sit for 2 to 3 days until ready to use.

Serve

  1. Turn it out of the pan, slice, and serve with mustard and vinegar.

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. Sage + marjoramtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together507 recipes

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

  2. Clove + marjoramtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  3. Pepper + marjoramtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,609 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

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

  5. Clove + sagetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together731 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Pork heads, tongues, and feet
Collagen-rich connective tissue that gels as it cools, holding the cheese together when sliced.
Sage leaves
Adds a warm, earthy aroma that stands out against the rich pork.
Sweet marjoram
Contributes a sweet, floral herbal aroma that complements the pork.

The step that matters

Pressing the mixture into pans. Packing the chopped meat firmly under a weight removes air pockets and squeezes the mixture into a dense block. Loose packing can leave a crumbly cheese that will not hold clean slices.

Swap the clove

The recipe marks clove as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pork, pepper, sage, marjoram):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Rosemaryfits better
  3. Winter savoryfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, pepper, sage, marjoram. 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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