MYSTERY MEAT

A longtime scrapple lover investigates the ingredients in this Pennsylvania staple

“But what’s in it?” I asked my father as a kid, sitting at the kitchen table, legs still short enough to swing barefoot from an antique chair, as I shoveled another forkful into my mouth.

I asked every time hunting season rolled around and this polarizing delicacy, tucked away among more identifiable edibles, emerged from my father’s Igloo cooler. My question was like an annual religious incantation that summoned forth a family ritual.

“I can’t believe you’re eating that!” my mother would always say, the corners of her mouth drawn down nearly to her jawline, the balance of her frame shifted onto one hip in an effort to support the weight of disgust, the weight of who is this child who gobbles that up?

Now my father’s face would light up, anticipating his punchline, our familiar dialogue. Eyes sparkling, he stood proudly upright and dropped another white butcher-paper-wrapped block on the counter: “Everything but the oink!”

He said it with a practiced, practically audible wink, eyes twinkling as my mother (a gastronome in her own right, but with a longer list of won’t-eats than wills) dropped her coffee cup into the sink with an exasperated sigh as once again, I preferred my father’s tastes over hers. Say “I love scrapple” in polite company and be prepared for looks of disgust. How can those skeptics (without fathers who returned home from hunting trips in Pennsylvania’s Dutch Country with solid blocks of pork purée to slice, fry crisp, and bathe in maple syrup) understand the livermush you hold so dear?

As an adult, as a trained chef, I am genuinely curious. What is scrapple, exactly? This question, whether asked at a Jersey shore diner or around the home breakfast table, is still a lightning rod for curled lips and suppressed gag reflexes—or for a raised eyebrow, a conspiratorial secret password, a knowing smirk: the sly indication that you love scrapple, too.

Scrapple hails from New Jersey and other states, but here in the mid-Atlantic region, it’s most identified with Pennsylvania Dutch Country, specifically the area near Lancaster, PA. I decide to set out to investigate scrapple recipes. I would visit a few butchers, poke around. Would they tell me what was in their scrapple recipes? The easy answer is found on the Internet: pork stock, cornmeal, spices, and vague references to organs. Celebrity chefs with road-food television shows describe “meaty ribs and hocks” or authentic-sounding “pounds of pork liver.” G-rated recipes for the home cook on colorful recipe aggregators tell us the main ingredient is just good, clean “sausage.” It is more than a little intimidating to waltz into a rural butcher shop and say, “So tell me: What’s in it?” As any restaurant cook presented with lists of patrons’ allergies can attest, this question sounds like an assault, no matter how well intentioned. But with all things heirloom and home-canned making the covers of urban style magazines, maybe scrapple just needs some good PR.

Andrea Beth, a family friend, warns me that Pennsylvania Dutch scrapple makers are rather. . . insular. “They are very unfriendly.” Her father is my Uncle Jimbo. Jimbo and my father (though not blood relations) grew up riding bikes around their Long Island neighborhood; when they were old enough, they got shotguns and hunting licenses.

Eventually Jimbo moved to the Pennsylvania countryside, while my father stayed put on the tidal salt marsh, thus providing our families with mutually satisfying vacation destinations. Jimbo had a big hand in getting kid-me intoxicated with the pleasures of food and hospitality. Round, jolly and warm like a real-life Santa Claus, he never arrived until well after a child’s bedtime, but that just meant the andouille jambalaya he whipped up was that much more savory as a midnight snack. The smell of Wild Turkey bourbon was sweet as the grownups imbibed, not noticing or caring that it was a school night.

I call Jimbo and ask him to recommend a few places I can go to investigate scrapple. He begins a roll call of places that were “good,” “really great” and the best: “What my buddy calls gourmet scrapple!” I plot points on the map, anxiety and anticipation firmly in place as I prepare to ask insular butchers, “What’s in it?” My first stop off the highway is the Lenhartsville, PA, post office. After a few hours on Route 78, I’m lost and in desperate need of a ladies’ room. I expect the federal employee sorting L.L. Bean catalogs to direct me to the nearest fast-food establishment. Instead, she swings the door open wide and says, “Head on back. First door on the left.” I haven’t been behind the post-office counter since a kindergarten field trip. But there I am, passing family portraits and inspirational wall hangings above employees’ desks.

“Peter Brothers? You’re almost there. Few more doors down, on the right, red building.” This is the detail a mail carrier can provide that a GPS unit cannot. I thank her, turn off my Garmin and head toward the clearly labeled Peter Brothers driveway as instructed.

In an empty town with dusty “For Rent” signs and neglected “Will Return At” plastic clocks hanging in nearly every Main Street window, the parking lot at the butcher’s is full. There’s a steady stream of people coming in empty-handed and leaving laden with large brown paper bags. Inside, there’s the heady smell of blood and bacon. At the counter, I ask for a brief education in scrapple-making. The lady helping the customers looks at me skeptically. Am I a health inspector? A member of PETA? No, I promise, I’m just a cook looking to satisfy a childhood curiosity.

She keeps one eye on me and walks along the counter, past her regulars, to a small group of butchers in long white coats with blood-soaked aprons, working on a carcass on a large table. She says something, and in unison they stop working and turn to look at me through the glass partition, knives dangling at their sides.

It’s unnerving.

One man breaks away, walks up to me and says, with zero interest in talking, “Well, you slice it about yea thick,” holding his meaty thumb and forefinger about an inch apart.

“She knows how to cook it. She wants to know how to make it,” the counter lady barks at him.

Where before he’d been merely annoyed at being distracted from his work, now he eyes me suspiciously, a look shared by the silenced posse over his shoulder.