Skip to main content
Main

To Make Scrapple

Scrapple is a mixture of boiled organ meats and buckwheat meal, chopped finely and seasoned.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 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 ↓

To Make Scrapple

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meats

  1. Boil the heart, kidneys, sweetbread, milt, and liver for about 1 hour.

  2. Chop all the meats very fine.

  3. Boil the skins, scraps, feet, and tongue until very tender, then chop them fine.

Make the mush

  1. Return the chopped meats to the boiling liquid.

  2. Add salt, black pepper, and sage to taste.

  3. Stir in buckwheat meal until the mixture thickens to a mush consistency, stirring continuously to prevent burning.

  4. Do not boil for long.

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

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

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

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

  4. Pepper + buckwheattop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together79 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Liver + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,375 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Buckwheat meal
Thickens the cooking liquid into a mush that sets firm when cooled.
Feet
Adds gelatin from connective tissue, helping the mixture set firm when chilled.
Skins and scraps
Add gelatin from connective tissue, supporting a firm set once chilled.
Liver
Adds rich, deep flavour and a soft, smooth body to the mush.

The step that matters

Stirring while the meal goes in. Buckwheat meal settles and scorches on the bottom of the pot if it is not stirred constantly, leaving burnt flavour and lumps through the mush.

Swap the buckwheat

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

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

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

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesYorkshire PuddingYorkshire Pudding264 recipes