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Pannhause or Pennsylvania Scrapple

A dish made from boiled hog head meat mixed with Indian meal and buckwheat flour, seasoned with salt and pepper, then sliced and fried.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Buckwheat and flour work together. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 660 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Pannhause or Pennsylvania Scrapple

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the hog's head

  1. Clean the hog's head and cut it into 4 or 5 pieces.

  2. Soak the pieces in cold water overnight to remove blood.

Cook and thicken

  1. Boil the pieces in 3 gallons of water until the meat falls from the bones.

  2. Let the meat cool, then remove the fat that rises to the top.

  3. Put the meat back on the heat. When warm, remove all bones and cut the meat into small pieces.

  4. Add the meat and liquid back to the pot.

  5. Stir in equal parts of Indian meal and buckwheat flour until it thickens.

  6. Season with coarse sea salt and black pepper.

Set and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into pans to cool.

  2. The next day, slice and fry until brown on both sides before serving.

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. Buckwheat + flourtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together660 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Buckwheat + peppertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together79 recipes

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

  3. Flour + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 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

Indian meal
Thickens the cooking liquid into a firm, sliceable mush as it cooks.
Buckwheat flour
Adds body and thickening so the mixture sets firm enough to slice and fry.

The step that matters

Frying the sliced scrapple until brown on both sides. Frying after the mush has set in the pans creates a browned crust through the Maillard reaction, adding flavor and a crisp exterior, while the interior stays tender.

Swap the buckwheat

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

  1. Jalapenofits better
  2. Turmericfits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Buckwheatthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, pepper. 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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