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November 9th, 2023
According to the National Day Calendar, today is National Scrapple Day.
You read correctly, National Scrapple Day.
What? You’re unfamiliar with scrapple?
Well, allow us to explain.
Scrapple is the first pork food invented in America. It is traditionally a mush of pork scraps and trimmings combined with cornmeal, wheat flour, and spices, such as sage, thyme, savory and black pepper. The mush is then formed into a semi-solid loaf, sliced and pan-fried.
Some people think it’s yummy. Some not so much.
Our Pennsylvania Dutch friends might know it as pon haus, and the immediate ancestor of scrapple was the Low German dish called panhas. Local settlers there adapted the dish to make use of locally available ingredients.
According to the National Day Calendar, “during the 17th and 18th centuries, German colonists who settled near Philadelphia and Chester County, Pennsylvania, developed the first recipes for scrapple. With such a rich heritage, many strongly associate scrapple with rural areas surrounding Philadelphia, Baltimore, Washington D.C., eastern Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Maryland, Delaware, eastern Virginia, and the Delmarva Peninsula.”
Supermarkets offer scrapple throughout those regions both in the refrigerated and frozen cases. There are recipes for it that include beef, chicken and turkey. You can pan-fry it, deep-fry it or broil it for different textures.
Pair it with a side of apple butter, ketchup, jelly, maple syrup, honey, horseradish or mustard and have yourself a great National Scrapple Day!
