In Defense Of Scrapple

Sunday mornings were one of the best parts of my childhood. After mass at Saint Philomena’s, my Mom and Dad made a big breakfast. No one was in a hurry to get to school or work so there was time to do something special. My father loved to slow cook the fried potatoes with onions. Before cracking the eggs, my Mom would fry thin slices of scrapple to a brown crisp. We would split up the Sunday papers and sit and enjoy breakfast together. It seemed back then that everyone ate scrapple and loved it. It was part of a perfect Sunday morning.

That is not the case today.

Nowadays there are people who love scrapple and there are people who hate scrapple. It is the Terrell Owens of breakfast foods. In the Philadelphia family of foods, the cheesesteak is the youngest child who gets all the attention and everyone brags about; scrapple is the child that no one talks about.

The name doesn’t help. It has the word “crap” right there in the middle.

The more definitive word is “scrap,” as in the sc raps that are used to make the pork concoction. There are worse names. In some places down South they call it “liver mush.”

You have to admit, “Scrapple” is a marketing gem compared to “Liver Mush”.

What we know as scrapple was brought here by the Pennsylvania Dutch from Germany. They called it Panhas, which seems to come from the Celtic word Pannas. Linguists believe that pannas was probably the name of the pan that the earliest forms of scrapple were served in. When the Celts ruled the land we now know as Germany in 2 B.C., they had a late Fall festival where hogs, pigs and wild boars were slaughtered in preparation for the winter months. William Woys Weaver writes about this in his book “Country Scrapple.” (Yes, there is an entire book written about scrapple!) Weaver writes, “Among the ancient Gauls (Celts), the meat was ritually divided according to social hierarchy, the best cuts going to the most powerful individuals. Meat-flavored gruel was distributed to the masses.”

Again - scrapple is also a much better name for a product than “meat flavored gruel.”

The word scrapple seems to be a combination of the German words Panhas and Kroppel, which means a small slice. So, Panhaskroppel would be a slice of Panhas. All the English heard was “skroppel.” That sounded a lot like a word they already knew and the translation became scrapple. So, the name actually has little to do with actual scraps and a lot to do with the same British arrogance (or ignorance) that led to the Germans who settled in Pennsylvania becoming the Pennsylvania Dutch because they said they came from “Deutschland.”

Scrapple is a pork product. It is made from the stuff that is left in the slaughterhouse after they have made the pork loin, the pork chops, the ribs, the sausage, the lard, the pig’s feet and the head cheese. Scrapple was invented by the original “Waste not, want not” people. It became popular with farmers and the common folk because it was inexpensive and it would keep longer than most meat products.

There are many descriptions of how scrapple is made. Not one of them is appealing. One that was particularly disturbing came from a cookbook of Southern Delicacies that started with this -

The feature attraction is the head. Remove the eyeballs (the brains were removed on the killing day and scrambled with eggs the next morning), break the head into manageable pieces with a cleaver, and cook them in a kettle of boiling water until the meat is easily pulled. Chop up the meat from the head and cook with the liver and heart and whatever else wasn’t used in other delicacies and grind them up.”

I almost became a vegetarian after reading those instructions.

The head, heart, liver and skin are all key components in scrapple. In Europe, the blood was a big part of the “liver pudding” or “panhas.” In America, the blood is not used. After the meat is cooked, it is removed and replaced with cornmeal. The cornmeal is boiled with the broth until it makes a thick mush. The meat is minced and added back into the mush. Then sage, salt, thyme, savory, nutmeg, allspice, cloves and other seasonings are added in various combinations. The meat cuts, proportions and seasonings vary to the tastes of a region or an individual. The mush is then put in a pan and cooled until it gels and forms a speckled, gray loaf.

Mmmm, mmm, who wants scrapple?

“A lot of people order scrapple,” according to Ken Williams, a shift manager at the famous Melrose Diner in South Philadelphia, “It is an old school Philadelphia dish. The people who eat it, love it.” Ken says that when people order scrapple they are asked how they would like it cooked. “Well done, medium or rare, just like steak.” That is just a polite way of saying do you want it crispy or mushy in the middle. “We don’t serve it with the traditional apple butter.”

Apple butter? I never heard of that.

"Oh sure, some people can’t eat scrapple without apple butter,” agreed John Curtis, a sales manager at Habbersett Scrapple. “When I was a kid, we put ketchup on it, some people use mustard or jelly, down South they use syrup.”

Habbersett sells more scrapple in Philadelphia than any other company. Habbersett and Rappa are the two brands of scrapple owned by Jones Dairy Farm in Wisconsin. Habbersett is in Media, Delaware County and has been around since 1863, right around the time that scrapple went from Pennsylvania Dutch farms to the mainstream. The Rappa Scrapple factory is in Bridgeville, Delaware. Rappa is the #1 selling brand in the country and is especially big in the Baltimore/Washington area.

“The Baltimore/Washington area and the Philadelphia area eat more scrapple than the rest of the country combined,” John explained. “But there is a scrapple resurgence in the South, especially in Virginia and Florida.” John told me that Habbersett makes “Philadelphia style” scrapple. It is a little milder than what they serve down I-95. “They like a little stronger liver taste in the Rappa brand.”

One more reason to be glad you live in Philadelphia – less liver.

But alas, John admits that the sale of scrapple is down year to year because of a couple of factors. “People don’t like to take the time to cook anymore. Scrapple takes at least twenty minutes to make properly.” That’s why Habbersett is working on a pre-cooked scrapple that the MTV generation can just pop in the microwave.

Then there is the other problem – scrapple has been getting a bad rap. “There is a lot of misinformation out there,” is the way John Curtis put it. But just like his scrapple, he is putting it mildly. In truth, scrapple is the object of a vicious smear campaign carried out by the stand up comics and the Internet. If you ask me, I think bacon is working behind the scenes in some bizarre breakfast meat competition.

On MoreIntelligentLife.Com Jon Fasman writes of scrapple, “I worry that there will come a day when I cut a thick slice for Sunday breakfast and find an angry embedded eyeball staring back at me from the frying pan.”

Here is a posting on a message board: “As I’ve said elsewhere, scrapple is made from things that, by law, aren’t allowed to be put in dog food. BTW, the “s” is silent in scrapple.

John Curtis laughs. He has heard it all. “It’s just not true. If anything, we have stricter government standards than other meat products. And scrapple is healthier than you think. Scrapple has no artificial preservatives, no MSG, it is low in fat and high in protein.”

How about a name change then? Does scrapple have to be so literal? John Fasman put it best, “We refer to ‘blue’ cheese not ‘moldy’ cheese; prosciutto is ‘aged’, not ‘allowed to rot in a controlled manner’; yogurt cultures are ‘living’ not ‘teeming and swarming’.”

I say when in doubt go French.

Everything sounds better when it is said in French. Doesn’t “Petits Morceaux de Cochon” sound good? It translates to scraps of pig. Sales might go down in part of Canada, but in America scrapple could find a new market among the aristocrats that go to fine French restaurants like Le Bec Fin where foie gras is a popular appetizer. Do you think it would sell if they called it goose liver? Just think how much Habbersett could charge for “Petits Morceaux de Cochon.”

“No thanks,” laughed John Curtis, “that’s not who we are.”

And that’s what it comes down to, doesn’t it? Scrapple is a big part of who we are. We should embrace the scrapple in us, like the forty thousand people who go to the Apple Scrapple Festival in Bridgeville, Delaware every fall. They have a scrapple toss, a scrapple carving competition and a scrapple cook-off. In short, they celebrate all things scrapple. They celebrate who they are. There is no pretense in scrapple.

Country singer Robbie Fulk wrote an outrageous and fun song about it. Here are some of the lyrics:

“The Mom-n-Pop diners ‘round Allentown
Don’t really have much that a fella can hold down
And the folks up ‘round Philly and Bethlehem
Ain’t gourmet types, really, or chefly men
Now, they’re God-fearin’ folk in that Keystone State
But their food ain’t fit for a collection plate
There’s things for all kinds of people to hate
But there’s one that everybody loves!
And they call it scrapple, scrapple
Cornmeal steamed and hogmeat dappled
Set by the window till it’s cold and hard
Sliced up thick and fried in lard
Say, what’s that swimmin’ in the big bread pan?
That’s kickin’ up all this mania?
It’s scrapple, scrapple
The pride of Pennsylvania.”



Robbie Fulk has captured the essence of scrapple. Make fun of the name and the
ingredients if you want, but it is ours. Habbersett likes to point out that scrapple is the original "brown n serve" food and arguably the first pork food invented in America. Sure the Celts had their festival in Germany, but the name and the process used for he past 200 years originated in Southeastern Pennsylvania.

Scrapple came from a time when no food could be wasted. It was too valuable of a commodity. It existed out of necessity. In a way the Pennsylvania Dutch were ahead of their time in their ability to recycle and create a valuable and palatable food source from what could have been discarded as garbage. It was quick energy for a hungry farmer in the winter. It was an important source of protein for an immigrant in the city.

If your family is from the Philadelphia area, chances are you ate scrapple or your grandparents or great grandparents did as they struggled to make it in a new country; as they struggled to feed a family; as they struggled to make a better life for those yet to come, a better life for you. Scrapple is part of us. Love it or hate it, understand it is important. Someone had to eat the scraps so that future generations wouldn't have to.

As I wrote this essay my wife Dawn was taken by the fact that my family sat together every Sunday and we ate the same special breakfast that my Grandmother fed my Mother when she was a child. Now Dawn wants to do something similar in our home; church, then a slow cooked breakfast served to our family around the kitchen table sharing stories from the Sunday paper.

Scrapple is a metaphor for something we might be missing, a simpler time when time together mattered more than what we ate or how fast it took to prepare.

In truth I have not had scrapple in a very long time. I think that is going to change.