Mine is a scrapple family. We often eat it on Christmas morning, or some time during the holiday season, a tradition started the year my mom left my father and took us to her parents’ farm to live. She grew up in the country, he definitely did not. I doubt it was his cup of tea. But my mother loves sweetbreads, shad roe, liver and onions, and the mustard in a steamed blue crab. If it’s offal, she’s on board.
Scrapple is a regional food of the Pennsylvania Dutch, brought over from Germany. It is the parts of a pig that are not sausage or chops or anything that can generate income or excitement. It is the end, and ends, both figuratively and literally, scraps of the pig simmered to release the meat in the head and trotters, the heart, liver, kidneys and whatever other parts tossed into the pot. The bones are picked out and the meat is blended with cornmeal, bound by braising liquid, then formed into a loaf.
Scrapple is best pan-fried, eaten with ketchup or syrup. Slice it thick, maybe a finger wide so it keeps its shape when flipped. A light dusting in flour, ideally Wondra, helps to create a good crust. Wondra, the only ingredient that simultaneously resides in both my mother’s kitchen and Le Bernardin. The sear is important and patience is paramount to achieve it. That crispy skin is everything, allowing the scrapple’s creamy interior to sing.
You can find it at the farmer’s market, or maybe from a butcher shop, usually one that buys whole animals. Always check the Amish. There are two regional producers that stock the grocery stores in Maryland, Delaware and Pennsylvania—Habbersett out of Philly and Delaware’s RAPA. We buy RAPA scrapple, they have the lock on distribution in central Maryland.
Scrapple has fans in New York too. High Hope Hogs at Union Square Greenmarket sometimes stocks it in their freezer. A Southern place I worked at in Williamsburg used it for a scrapple sandwich on white bread with butter. A few years later, I worked in a restaurant chosen to compete in Cochon555, a contest based on educating people about heritage breeds of pigs. Really it was about eating a lot of meat and drinking a lot of bourbon.
Each restaurant made several dishes out of one pig. My chef and I tested a dish inspired by very classic, old school French charcuterie techniques. We made scrapple and poured it into a deboned pig’s head, manipulating it to inflate the entire head to the snout. If this sounds gruesome, it was a bit, and I’m definitely leaving out some details. I think anything involving any deboned head can be, but understand that in 2012, the New York restaurant scene was very meaty, and very bro-y. This dish did not make the cut. We did not win Cochon555.
I last saw scrapple on the streets of New York in the Farmers to Family boxes of perishable food provided during COVID. This emergency aid response from the USDA granted contracts, ideally to local, small and medium-sized producers, over the course of five rounds through twelve months. Pallets of food were then allocated to pantries to distribute to the ever-increasing numbers of people experiencing food insecurity. There were a myriad of problems, mostly that it could have been so better executed and impactful if the right people were consulted. Instead it just seemed like a bunch of business cronies got the contracts. The food was underwhelming—milk, cartons of liquid eggs, giant containers of plain yogurt or sometimes kefir, potatoes, onions, apples and all pre-cooked meat—chicken thighs, hot dogs, chicken patties and a few times there was scrapple.
And surprise, scrapple was not a hit. It was the most discarded item of food when people loaded the items into their carts,1 tossed into a milk crate on the sidewalk for someone else to pick up.2
Whenever I hear this Notorious B.I.G. lyric
Remember when I used to eat sardines for dinner
I assume those sardines came from a food pantry, possibly the same one where I worked in Bed-Stuy. Tinned fish, a cornerstone of food pantries. When I think of those USDA boxes, and whoever did eat the scrapple and pick up the extras, I wonder if that taste, that flavor, has become a sense memory attached to that time, May 2020- May 2021.
Given a moment, or the right narrator, scrapple could be revered, like charcuterie, a resourceful twist on a country paté. We love local foodways! And while I appreciate its very unromantic, descriptive name, no lies there, it’s not doing itself any favors to win over the public. But in the words of Fergus Henderson, chef and founder of St. John restaurant, “If you’re going to kill the animal, it seems only polite to use the whole thing.” And I can think of no greater demonstration of this sentiment than this block of food.
If you are ever eating with me in a diner that has scrapple on the menu, I’m ordering it for the table. Unless, of course, you are vegetarian. I wouldn’t do that to you.
There were a few rounds where the USDA instructed the packers to put a letter from the White House in every box, printed in both Spanish and English and signed by Donald Trump. We took them out.
https://www.citizen-times.com/story/news/local/2020/10/22/trumps-letter-food-boxes-leaves-some-food-banks-sticky-position/3711017001/
For those interested, here is a report on this program.
https://sustainableagriculture.net/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/F2F-Food-Box-Report-Online-Final3.pdf
I’m not at all a scrapple fan, but I’m from Maryland, like you (actually Towson specifically, like you!) so really enjoyed hearing you riff on it. My mom LOVES it and will always order it anywhere we go that serves it and I enjoy seeing her enjoy it.
Wow, love this (of course). Growing up on the West Coast I've never seen scrapple on a menu but I will definitely keep an eye out for it when I'm back stateside. I wonder if I could repurpose the head cheese I see so often in grocery stores in Ljubljana..