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Pork Cheese

A preserved pork product made by boiling, seasoning, and pressing the meat into a firm loaf.

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.

  3. Chop the meat small and season with salt, black pepper, and beaten cloves if desired.

  4. Add minced sage and sweet marjoram, then mix well with your hands.

Press and set

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

  2. Let it sit for 2-3 days until firm, then turn it out of the pan.

Serve

  1. 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, binding the mass into a firm loaf.
Sage leaves
Adds a pungent, earthy aroma that characterises the cheese.
Sweet marjoram
Adds a sweet, floral herbal aroma that complements the pork.

The step that matters

Pressing the mixture under a heavy weight. Compaction squeezes out air pockets and excess liquid so the chopped meat and gelatine set into a dense, sliceable block rather than a crumbly one.

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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