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Italian Cheese

A baked pork liver cheese made with bacon fat, pork fat, spices, sage, and eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Pork and liver are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,606 recipes. Both carry 1-nonanal, which smells fatty, waxy. The science ↓

Italian 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 of a young porker.

  2. Mix the chopped liver with two-thirds the weight of bacon fat and one-third of fresh pork fat.

  3. Season the mixture with spices and shredded sage.

  4. Add four raw eggs to the mixture and mix the mixture well.

Bake

  1. Line a stewpan with bacon fat.

  2. Pour the mixture into the lined stewpan and cover the stewpan with more bacon fat.

  3. Close the lid.

  4. Bake at 350°F (175°C) for three hours.

Finish and serve

  1. Turn the cheese out of the stewpan.

  2. Glaze the cheese.

  3. Decorate the cheese with jelly.

  4. Serve the cheese 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. Pork + livertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,606 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-nonanal (fatty, waxy).

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

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

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

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

  4. Liver + eggtop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,177 recipes

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

  5. Pork + eggtop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,387 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

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

What each ingredient does

Pork liver
Forms the main body of the cheese and gives it its rich, savoury flavour.
Bacon fat
Adds moisture and richness, keeping the liver mixture tender as it bakes.
Fresh pork fat
Adds fat that keeps the mixture moist and smooth during baking.
Eggs
Bind the mixture so it sets into a sliceable loaf when baked and cooled.

The step that matters

Baking the mixture in fat. The mixture must be fully enclosed in fat and baked slowly so it cooks through without drying out. Covering it with fat limits moisture loss, and the eggs set the mixture as it cools.

Swap the sage

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

  1. Sagethe original
  2. Thymefits about as well
  3. Nutmegfits less well
  4. Parsleyfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, liver, egg. 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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