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Lottie's Scrapple

Scrapple is a pork loaf thickened with cornmeal and flour, seasoned with salt, sage, and onion.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Pork and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 18,214 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Lottie's Scrapple

Ingredients

Directions

Make the meat base

  1. Stew the pork until thoroughly cooked.

  2. Remove the meat and add enough water to the cooking liquid to make 1 quart.

  3. Remove all bones from the meat and chop it finely or process it through a meat chopper.

  4. Return the chopped meat to the kettle and add more salt, sage, and onion if desired.

Make the mush

  1. Mix cornmeal with a little flour, then sift it in slowly while stirring constantly to prevent lumps.

  2. Cook until thick enough for a spoon to stand in it, about 2-3 minutes.

  3. Pour the mixture into a pan and let it cool.

Serve

  1. When ready to serve, slice thin and fry in drippings.

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. Pork + oniontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,214 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

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

  3. Sage + oniontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,628 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Sage + flourtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,115 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Onion + flourtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together32,460 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Pork
Provides the meat and fat that form the body and flavor of the loaf.
Cornmeal
Thickens the cooking liquid into a mush that sets firm when cooled.
Flour
Helps keep the cornmeal smooth and lump-free as it is added to the liquid.
Drippings
Fry the sliced loaf, adding fat that browns the surface.

The step that matters

Sifting the cornmeal into the liquid. Adding cornmeal slowly while stirring constantly prevents lumps, because dry starch clumps when it hits hot liquid before its granules can disperse evenly.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Turnipfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Sweet potatofits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, 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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