Scrapple NOT German?
I’ve been talking quite a bit about that meat-which-I-hate, scrapple.
Well, one of my readers, Mark, chimed in with some really amazing information on what I had assumed was a Pennsylvania Dutch (and therefore German in origin) food:
Short background, I was born and raised in York, graduated from Central and now live in Austria. I love this blog to keep me somewhat up to date on York. To the ‘meat’ of this post…Believe it or not, even though the German settlers are credited with ‘bringing’ the scrapple recipe with them, no one, and I mean NO ONE here in Austria or those I know in germany for that fact,know of or even ever heard of scrapple. I even mentioned pon haus and they looked at me like I was crazy. This being said, I finally found a few good recipes to try and after my first batch, actually have some converts here. Amazing isn’t it? A Yorker, introducing an assumed German dish to German/Austrian folks…and they love it!!! Thanks for the blog. I think I am going to make my next batch this weekend and eat it the way it is supposed to be eaten, thin, crispy and with King Syrup!
King Syrup? Wow, as much as I loved Mark’s comment, I don’t love his taste… I think he just made a bad thing worse!
So, scrapple fans… what IS the cultural origin of your mixed meat? And what on earth do you put on it? Ketchup? Syrup? Something equally gross? Discuss.
Visiting my hometown in South Jersey, my mother was frying RAPA scrapple, a first for my husband, a 6th generation Texan. He smelled it cooking and proclaimed, “That’s pon haus!” He loved it and we’ve flown scrapple back with several times since My husband’s mother is from Comfort, Texas, a town in the Hill Country settled by Germans. Just yesterday we bought pon haus at Alamo Meat Market in Comfort. We made a special trip from Austin. It’s the only place we know to find it.