Explain This To Me is a new occasional series in which I, a relative outsider, ask you, the reader, to explain some specific bit of “local color.”
From Wikipedia:
Scrapple is a savory mush of pork scraps and trimmings combined with cornmeal and flour, often buckwheat flour. The mush is formed into a loaf, and slices of the scrapple are then fried before serving. Scraps of meat left over from butchering, not used or sold elsewhere, were made into scrapple to avoid waste. Scrapple is best known as a regional American food of Delaware, Virginia, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Maryland…
…Scrapple is typically made of hog offal, such as the head, heart, liver, and other scraps, which are boiled with any bones attached (often the entire head), to make a broth.
Okay. Let’s read that again. “Head, heart, liver, and other scraps.” Reading Terminal Market even holds a little festival for it.
Do you folks actually eat this stuff? Or, is it more of a “dare” kind of food, something you use to show off how tough you are?
I believe you, Philadelphia- you’re tough, I get it. You can put down the facade and put down the scrapple.
Please explain this to me. Thank you.
3 responses so far ↓
1 Meg // Mar 18, 2009 at 1:31 pm
I grew up in the area and I’ve never, ever eaten it. My boyfriend, who grew up in North Jersey, loves it.
2 mark // Mar 21, 2009 at 10:13 pm
scrapple is everything but the Oink. tastes great with ketchup or mustard on it.
3 robert // Apr 6, 2009 at 2:16 am
I know this is too late, but I grew up in Virginia eating this and thinking it was a Southern delicacy. There is a town in North Carolina that has a Scrapple festival every year.
I don’t really care for it, but the smell of it frying always makes me nostalgic.
You do realize you’ve eaten worse than what you find in Scrapple whenever you bought hamburger, or any ground meat?
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