Even more thoughts on puddin and ponhaus
Roy Flinchbaugh wrote to me regarding a previous posting on one of York County’s favorite meats.
He said, “Your column … brought back memories of my father who really enjoyed ponhaus (I never knew how to spell it, but I just looked it up in my PA Dutch dictionary and they spell it “ponnhawsz” – pretty complex it seems, and I like your spelling better; but checking out “ponn” and “hawsz” in the same dictionary it turns out to mean ‘pan rabbit.’ About as much rabbit as in Welsh rabbit.)”
Roy continues, “In any case the whole business about pigs & parts reminded me of something I once heard: ‘Those who enjoy sausage and respect the law should never watch either one of them being made.'”
Roy, that made me laugh!
Meanwhile, I also heard from Bill Schmeer on the same topic. Bill had sent me this awesome June article from CNN’s “Eatocracy” blog, titled Liver Mush: A North Carolina treat from way back when.
Bill followed up his link with a note: “I don’t want to underestimate you, but I hope you understand that the liver mush they’re talking about is the same as our pudding.” The article goes on to talk about pudding as well as “mush” and scrapple. Very interesting reading.
Bill, by the way, is a man after my own heart; he’ll talk about this food, but he sure doesn’t want it! “I don’t eat any of that stuff either,” he said, “even though my father made it and other people did eat it. … I have taken a bite out of pudding several times, but was never able to like it enough to eat the rest. When I was a small child my mother used to give me little pieces of uncooked scrapple when she was frying it. But I don’t care much for it either way today. Before you say, ‘YUCK,’ to raw scrapple, remember, it has already gone through the cooking process when it’s being made. I don’t know if you’ve ever discussed another German favorite, braunschweiger or liverwurst. Now, my wife likes that, but doesn’t eat much anymore because of the meat’s high colesterol and her heart condition. I don’t care for that, either.”
In fact, I don’t think we’ve ever talked liverwurst, but I’m definitely in the “eww” camp on it. We used to use it to tuck in pills for our dog, and it smelled TERRIBLE. Blech! Any other takes on that, though?
