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Scrapple. Philadelphia Style

Scrapple is a pork head and cornmeal mixture cooked, cooled, sliced, breaded, and fried.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Scrapple. Philadelphia Style

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meat

  1. Clean the pig's head and place it in a stew pan with hot water.

  2. Simmer for 3 hours.

  3. Remove the head and cool it.

  4. Once cool, remove the bones and chop the meat finely.

  5. Add salt, pepper, and sage to the meat.

Make the mush

  1. Return the meat to the cooking liquid and bring to a boil.

  2. Sprinkle in cornmeal while stirring quickly.

  3. Cook for 2 hours, ensuring it doesn't burn.

  4. Cool the mixture in a deep pan.

Slice and fry

  1. Cut the mixture into slices.

  2. Roll slices in flour or breadcrumbs.

  3. Fry slices until brown.

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).

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

What each ingredient does

Pig's head
Provides the meat and natural gelatin that bind the mixture as it cools.
Cornmeal
Thickens the cooking liquid so the mixture sets firm enough to slice.
Sage
Adds a savory, aromatic flavor to the meat.

The step that matters

Cook the cornmeal while stirring quickly. Cornmeal added to hot liquid can clump and scorch if not stirred constantly. Lumps and burnt bits spoil the smooth texture, and the mixture must not burn during the long cook that follows.

“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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