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PIG'S HEAD, SCRAPPLE OF (an American dish)
Scald and clean a pig's head, and remove the hair, the snout, the ears, and the brain. Put it on the fire in four quarts of cold water, and bring it slowly to the boil. Skim carefully, season the liquid rather highly with salt and cayenne, and add half a dozen sage-leaves, chopped small. Let the head simmer gently for two hours, then take out the bones, mince the flesh finely, and put it back into the liquid. Stir in as much sifted cornmeal as will thicken the liquid, and simmer two hours longer, until it is of the consistency of thick porridge. Pour it into deep jars, and set in a cool place. When scrapple of pig's head is to be eaten, cut it into slices, and fry these in hot fat for breakfast. Time, ten minutes to fry the slices. Probable cost of head, 8d. per pound. Sufficient for three or four good-sized jars.
A cornmeal-and-pork mush set firm and fried in slices. The recipe is sound as written; the two places it needs help are the vague cornmeal quantity and the instruction to store it in "a cool place."
- The hinge: stir constantly for the second hourOnce the cornmeal goes in, the pot thickens to porridge and will scorch on the bottom the moment you turn your back. Use a heavy pan over the lowest possible heat, a flat-edged wooden spoon, and scrape the corners. Burnt scrapple tastes burnt all the way through and cannot be rescued.
- How much cornmealThe original leaves this open. Some of the four quarts will have boiled away by the time the meat goes back in, so judge by the pot rather than by a fixed ratio: add fine or medium yellow cornmeal in a slow stream while whisking, and stop when it mounds on the spoon, remembering that it firms considerably as it cools.
- Sourcing the headOrder a split pig's head from a butcher; it will usually arrive cleaned, and often with the eyes and brain already out, which spares you most of the first sentence. The original works from a whole head to four quarts of water, so scale the water down if you are using only a half. If a whole head is impractical, hocks and shoulder with a trotter for gelatine give a close result, though less of the silky texture the head skin provides.
- Sifted cornmeal"Sifted" here most likely means sieved free of grit and coarse hull rather than anything removed for lightness. Modern packaged cornmeal needs no sifting. Avoid coarse polenta grind, which stays gritty, and instant meal is best avoided.
- Bones and gristlePull the meat while the head is still hot and go through it carefully with your fingers. Small bones from the jaw and the ear base are easy to miss and unpleasant in a fried slice. Mince or pulse the meat coarsely rather than to paste.
- Setting and storagePour into loaf tins lined with plastic wrap rather than jars; the loaf shape gives even slices. "A cool place" meant a larder at larder temperature. Chill in the refrigerator and treat it as any cooked meat: three or four days refrigerated, or slice and freeze for several months.
- FryingCut slices a good half-inch thick, no thinner, or they collapse. A hot pan with a film of lard or bacon fat, four to five minutes a side, and do not move them until a crust has formed. The ten minutes in the original is presumably total time for both sides.
- Seasoning and yieldSeason the liquid more aggressively than seems sensible; cornmeal absorbs salt and the cooled loaf tastes flatter than the hot pot did. Three or four "good-sized jars" is a large quantity, and depending on how far the pot has reduced it will fill more than a couple of loaf tins.
Scrapple is the Pennsylvania German contribution to American breakfast, generally traced to the Rhineland and Westphalian tradition of panhaas or panhas, traditionally glossed as "pan rabbit," in which the broth and trimmings left from slaughtering a pig were thickened with buckwheat or rye flour, set firm, and sliced for frying. In the Delaware Valley cornmeal replaced or joined the buckwheat, and the dish became so identified with the region that it is still sold by the loaf in Philadelphia markets. Cassell's flags it as "an American dish," printed as a curiosity, complete with the price per pound, for readers who would probably never make it. The underlying logic is pure thrift-butchery. A head yields a great deal of gelatinous, well-flavoured meat and a broth that sets on its own, and grain stretches it into something that will feed a household for a week of breakfasts.