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Scrapple

Scrapple is a savory pork mixture made from hog parts, seasoned, thickened with cornmeal and buckwheat flour, then molded and fried.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meat

  1. Clean and soak the hog's head, heart, tongue, and liver in saltwater for 24 hours.

  2. Boil in cold water until the meat easily comes off the bones.

Make the mush

  1. Chop the meat finely and season with salt, pepper, and sage.

  2. Strain the cooking liquid and return the meat to it.

  3. Place on the stove and thicken with cornmeal and buckwheat flour until it reaches a mushy consistency.

Mold and preserve

  1. Mold the mixture and fry it like mush.

  2. To preserve, cover with hot lard.

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).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Sage + buckwheattop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

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

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

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

Cornmeal
Thickens the cooking liquid into a mush that holds its shape when cooled.
Buckwheat flour
Adds further thickening so the mixture becomes firm enough to mold and fry.
Hog's head
Provides the meat and gelatin-rich liquid that body the scrapple.

The step that matters

Thickening the mush. Cornmeal and buckwheat flour must be stirred in while the liquid is hot and kept moving so they gelatinize evenly without lumps. Once thickened and cooled, the mixture sets firm enough to slice and fry.

Swap the buckwheat

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

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Buckwheatthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against liver, pepper, 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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