Today's Case:
Original Scrapple Recipe
Re: Original Scrapple Recipe
From: Ina
To: Phaedrus
Date: 3/12/2024, 1:36 PM
On 3/12/2024 12:57 AM, Ina wrote:
I would like to know if you could locate an original recipe for Scrapple.
Thank You
Ina
Hello Ina,
I spent quite a bit of time thinking about your request. I wondered if you had preconceptions about scrapple. I looked at a lot of recipes for scrapple and I read a lot of articles about the history of scrapple. The results of what I found is basically this:
There is no "original" recipe for scrapple in the dictionary sense of "original." Early settlers brought the dish to Pennsylvania from Europe, probably from Germany in particular, and perhaps the Palatinate in Germany specifically. (Maybe from Holland as well.) It was called "ponhaws" or "pawnhaus" or "pannhaas" by those early settlers, and it is still referred to by those names by some folks. The name "scrapple" was given to it in the Philadelphia area and that has mostly replaced the old names, particularly among non-Pennsylvania Dutch-folk. It was a mixture of pork, pork head meats and organ meats, buckwheat, and whatever spices were available. Later, corn meal replaced first part of, and then sometimes all of, the buckwheat. There are dozens of variations in the meat used at times, including venison, beef, chicken, turkey - whatever was available. Pork was the first choice, and scrapple was usually made at hog butchering time from whatever pork was left over after the butchering was done. In “The Larder Invaded” by William Woys Weaver, the author, a food historian, says "Scrapple is a medieval dish."
Now if you mean "oldest written recipe" instead of "original recipe", we can get closer to an answer. The earliest recipe for scrapple that I can find mention of is this one: The earliest scrapple recipe Mrs. Wood has found dates to 1750. It stipulates bits and pieces of pork, 30 to 40 percent cornmeal, liquid and herbs for .... However, that is merely a Google blurb. That quote is from an article in the Philadelphia Inquirer of April 25, 1982. I am not a subscriber to "newspapers.com", so I cannot access the full article to find out who "Mrs. Wood" was and to what recipe she refers.
Possibly the oldest recipe on the web for scrapple, but unverifiably so, is this one from "Thirty-five receipts from 'The Larder Invaded'" by William Woys Weaver. It's Elizabeth Nicholson's recipe, and Weaver speculated that it probably dates from the 18th century:
Take a pig's haslet(heart and liver) and as much offal lean and fat pork
as you wish, to make scrapple; boil them well together in a small quantity
of water until they are tender; chop them fine, after taking them out of the
liquor; season, as sausage; then skim off the fat that has arisen where the
meat was boiled, to make all soft, throw away the rest of the water, and put
this altogether in the pot, thickening it with 1/2 buckwheat and 1/2 Indian
(corn - cornmeal?). Let it boil up, then pour out in pans to cool. Slice and
fry it in sausage-fat, after the sausage is done.
Another one, but this one is verified as from Godey's Ladies Magazine, edited by L.A. Godey, Sarah J. Hale, 1860:
Ingredients:
leftover bits from making pork sausage
pepper & salt
sage
sweet marjoram powdered
Indian meal
Instructions:
This is generally made of the head of a porker, the feet, and any pieces
that may be left after making sausage-meat. Scrape and wash well all the
pieces, and put them into a pot, with just as much water as will cover them;
let them boil slowly till the flesh is perfectly soft, and the bones loose; take
all the meat out of the pot, free it from the bones, cut it up fine, and return
it to the liquor in the pot; season it with pepper, salt, and sage and sweet
marjoram powdered, to the taste; set the pot over the fire, and, just before
it begins to boil, stir in gradually as much Indian meal as will make it the
thickness of stiff batter; let it boil a few minutes, take it off, and pour it in
pans; when cold, cut it in slices, flour it, and fry it in hot lard.
Also verified, but a bit more recent, from "Domestic Cookery", published in 1869 by Elizabeth Ellicott Lea:
Take eight pounds of scraps of pork that will not do for sausage; boil it in
four gallons of water; when tender, chop fine, strain the liquor and pour it
back into the pot; put in the meat; season it with sage, summer savory, salt
and pepper to taste; stir in a quart of corn meal; after simmering a few minutes,
thicken it with buckwheat flour very thick.
If this is not what you wanted, write back. Remember, though, that Scrapple was not invented by a particular cook in Pennsylvania in the early 1800s. It had been around for many years before that and it went back to the Old World. We just don't have an older recipe that was written down or printed.
Phaed
For more scrapple recipes, see: Also see: Scrapple Recipes
