  The quark condensate in nuclear matter contains a term of order $\rho m_\pi$,
arising from the contribution of low-momentum virtual pions to the $\pi N$
sigma commutator. Standard treatments of QCD sum rules for a nucleon in matter
generate a similar term in the nucleon effective mass, although this is
inconsistent with chiral perturbation theory. We show how an improved treatment
of pionic contributions on the phenomenological side of the sum rules can
cancel out this unwanted piece. Our results also show that factorisation ansatz
for the four-quark condensate cannot be valid in matter.
