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Italian Pork Cheese

A baked pork cheese made from liver, bacon, and pig fat, seasoned with salt, pepper, allspice, sage, shallots, thyme, and bay leaf.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Allspice and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,874 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Italian Pork Cheese

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the mixture

  1. Chop the liver, fat bacon, and pig's fat finely.

  2. Season the mixture with salt, pepper, allspice, sage, shallots, thyme, and bay leaf.

Layer and bake

  1. Cover the bottom of a round baking tin with a thin layer of fat bacon.

  2. Add about 1 inch of the minced liver mixture on top of the bacon.

  3. Layer square pieces of bacon on top, then repeat the process until all ingredients are used, finishing with fat bacon on top.

  4. Cover the tin and bake at 350°F (175°C) for 3 hours.

Serve

  1. Once cooled, place the mold in hot water to release the contents and serve cold.

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. Allspice + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Sage + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,485 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Allspice + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,077 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Shallot + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,476 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Allspice + sagetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together331 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

What each ingredient does

Liver
Forms the dense, savoury body of the loaf.
Fat bacon
Adds fat and moisture that keeps the loaf from drying out during baking.
Pig's fat
Adds richness and moisture, helping the mixture hold together as it sets.
Shallots
Add aromatic sweetness and savoury flavour to the mixture.

The step that matters

Cover the tin and bake at 350°F (175°C) for 3 hours. Liver is delicate and can turn grainy or dry if overcooked. Gentle, covered baking in a moderate oven cooks the mixture evenly while the fat keeps it moist and lets it set firm once chilled.

Swap the shallot

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

  1. Carrotfits about as well
  2. Parsnipfits about as well
  3. Shallotthe original
  4. Mustardfits about as well

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