Served in a deep, placid pool of egg yolk and ketchup, it is a veritable cholesterol meltdown. Properly prepared and fried, scrapple should be a tasty looking golden brown.Īlthough edible raw, Scrapple is usually sliced and fried in butter or lard. That may have been the fault of my mother, the cook. I didn’t quite relish it because of its gray color. Being a good source of cheap protein, it often made a morning appearance at our table. (See recipes below.)īeing born and raised in Pennsylvania, I was destined to have a piece of a scrapple slapped across my breakfast plate. Besides, modern day recipes make no use of questionable pork parts.
It’s a deck of cards sized slab, crispy on the outside, soft inside and may be embellished with butter, maple syrup, applesauce, ketchup or mashed in with its usual partner: a plateful of fried eggs. If one can get past what goes into making scrapple, he or she may discover it tastes surprising good-like country-style pork sausage with a unique shape and texture. Those faint of palate needn’t venture any further. Scrapple may contain pork skin, pork heart, pork liver, pork tongue-even pork brains. Scrapple is one of them.īut what parts of the hog go into the creation of scrapple? After the ham, bacon, chops and other cuts of meat are taken from the butchered pig-what remains are fixings for scrapple-including the meat scraped off the head.
They are frugal people and many of their dishes make imaginative use of every part of the butchered hog’s anatomy. The mush is formed into a semi-solid congealed loaf, and slices of the scrapple are then pan-fried before serving. The term “Pennsylvania Dutch” is a corrupted form of Pennsylvania Deutsche, mostly transplanted Rhineland farmers who worked hard and ate heartily. Scrapple, also known by the Pennsylvania Dutch name panhaas or 'pan rabbit,' is traditionally a mush of pork scraps and trimmings combined with cornmeal and wheat flour, often buckwheat flour, and spices. Scrapple is the unique creation of the Pennsylvania Dutch, and therefore only quasi-American as the immigrants combined their German heritage with New World ingredients. Anti-scrapplers consider it a culinary abomination. Scrapple lovers think of it as food for the gods. It’s dictionary defined as “cornmeal mush made with the meat and broth of pork, seasoned with onions, spices and herbs and shaped into loaves for slicing and frying.” The word, scrapple originates from “scrap” or “scrappy” meaning made up of odds and ends for that’s exactly what it is-boiled, ground leftover pig scraps with cornmeal and spices thrown in. Often erroneously called Philadelphia Scrapple, it’s really a dish that originated in the Eastern Pennsylvania farmlands of German born settlers-far from the city of Brotherly Love. It’s savory, porky, rich, and versatile.Unless you live in the Middle Atlantic states, you may have never had the dubious pleasure of breakfasting on scrapple-a fried slice of pork-mush. It can be mixed with scrambled eggs or simply served between two slices of white bread. It’s traditionally served as a breakfast side dish, with sweet or savory condiments including ketchup, grape jelly (yep), applesauce, honey, mustard, or maple syrup. Now onto the good part: Scrapple is absolutely delicious. Half-inch slices are then cut off and fried in butter until golden brown. Spices including sage, black pepper, thyme, and savory are added, and the mixture is them formed into loaves, which are allowed to cool until set. Pork meat (sometimes, but not always, along with offal including the head, heart, and liver) is boiled until falling apart, finely minced, and combined with cornmeal and flour into a slurry. A traditional rural American food of the Mid-Atlantic states, scrapple is the perfect example of the peasant tradition of taking food that would otherwise go to waste and turning it into something delicious.įirst, let’s get the exact definition of scrapple out of the way. If you call yourself a pork lover, then you really should be eating scrapple.
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