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To Make Scrapple

Scrapple is a savory loaf made from boiled pork parts, seasoned, thickened with buckwheat meal, and formed into a mush.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 ↓

To Make Scrapple

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the meats

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

  2. Chop all the boiled meats very fine.

  3. Boil the skins, scraps, feet, and tongue until tender.

  4. Chop them fine.

  5. Return the chopped meats to the boiling liquid.

Thicken and season

  1. Add coarse sea salt, black pepper, and sage to taste.

  2. Stir in buckwheat meal until the mixture thickens like mush.

  3. Stir continuously to prevent burning.

  4. Do not boil for long after adding the buckwheat meal.

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. Bread + sagetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,778 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

Buckwheat meal
Thickens the cooking liquid and meats into a firm, mush-like mass as it cooks.
Liver
Adds rich, deep meaty flavour and body to the mixture.
Heart
Contributes dense, meaty texture and savoury flavour to the mush.

The step that matters

Stirring after adding buckwheat meal. Buckwheat meal thickens quickly and its starches can scorch on the bottom of the pot. Stirring continuously and not boiling too long keeps the mixture smooth and prevents burning.

Swap the buckwheat

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, 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.

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