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Grilled Salt Pork
Cut thin slices from the thick, fat part of side pork. The slices should be clear white and thinly streaked with lean. Hold each on a toasting fork before a hot fire, immersing it frequently in cold water thus to remove the extra fat and make it delicate. Cover the slices, as cooked, in a warm pan and serve them hot when all are grilled.
SCRAPPLE-Scrape and thoroughly clean a hog's head; then split it and take out the eyes and brain. The butcher will, of course, do this for you if so directed. Clean the ears and scrape them well. Put all on to boil in plenty of cold water, and simmer gently for four hours, or until the bones will easily slip from the meat. Lift out the meat and bones into a colander, remove the bones and chop the meat fine. Skim off every particle of grease from the water in which the meat was boiled, and return the chopped meat to the kettle and water. Season highly with pepper and salt and such powdered herbs as may be preferred. Now take a large wooden spoon and stir constantly, meanwhile adding enough corn meal and buckwheat flour, in equal quantities, to make a soft mush. Cook slowly one hour, stirring constantly, as the mush will scorch easily. Pour the mixture into dishes and keep it in a cool place, slicing it as needed.
Two recipes run together here: thin-sliced salt pork grilled over a fire, and a full hog's-head scrapple. Both were everyday winter work in a household that bought pork by the side.
- Side pork and salt pork"Side pork" is the belly, the same cut that becomes bacon; the recipe title assumes it is salt-cured. Commercial salt pork can be very salty, so it is worth soaking slices in cold water for an hour, changing the water once, before grilling.
- The dipping in cold waterThis is the hinge of the first recipe. Plunging the hot slice into cold water between passes over the fire chills and washes away rendered fat, so the meat crisps rather than fries in its own grease. Under a broiler, achieve the same by pouring off the fat as it collects and blotting the slices.
- Broiler equivalentA toasting fork before a hot fire translates to a broiler at high heat, rack about 4 inches from the element, turning once. Thin slices take 2 to 4 minutes a side and go from browned to burnt quickly, since the surface is nearly pure fat.
- Getting the hog's headYou will need to order this from a butcher who slaughters whole animals or from a Latin American or Asian market; it is not a supermarket item. Half a head is more manageable for a home kettle. Take the recipe at its word and have the butcher split it and remove the eyes and brain.
- The four-hour simmerSimmer means bare movement at the surface, not a boil, or the fat emulsifies into the stock and the finished scrapple turns greasy. Cook until bones pull free cleanly; a large head may want five hours.
- Meal-to-stock proportionThe original gives no measure, only "enough corn meal and buckwheat flour to make a soft mush." As a working ratio, figure roughly one part combined meal to four parts stock by volume, added in a slow stream while stirring. It should mound on the spoon but still pour.
- Herbs and seasoningTraditional scrapple seasoning is black pepper, sage, and often thyme, marjoram, and a little ground coriander. Season the stock aggressively before the meal goes in; once thickened, it is very hard to correct.
- Setting and storingPour into loaf pans, cool uncovered until steam stops, then refrigerate rather than leaving it in a "cool place" as written. It will keep about a week refrigerated and freezes well. Slice half an inch thick and fry in a dry hot pan until a crust forms before turning.
- YieldA whole hog's head yields a great deal of scrapple, roughly four to five loaf pans. Halve everything unless you intend to freeze most of it.
Scrapple is the Pennsylvania German contribution to American breakfast, generally traced to the panhaas or "pan rabbit" of the Rhineland, a buckwheat-and-scrap pudding made when a pig was killed. The principle is thrift: the head, ears, and trimmings that will not cut into chops are simmered down, and the resulting stock and meat are stretched with grain into something that slices and keeps. The combination of cornmeal and buckwheat here is often said to be the older Pennsylvania proportion, before commercial scrapple is thought to have leaned more heavily on cornmeal alone. That the Butterick editors set it beside grilled salt pork is telling: both are winter breakfast meats from a home-butchered hog, and in 1911 a book aimed at the sewing-pattern household still assumed its readers might have a whole side of pork in the cellar and a butcher willing to split a head on request.