Bite-sized squares come served on deer antlers for a presentation that’s as wild as its flavor. It’s a nod to the Northeast hunting culture.” Venison scrapple is similar in texture to the pork version but expect a more rustic, gamy flavor amplified by the dab of pepper sauce. So really, it’s truer to the roots of how scrapple would be made now for the average person as opposed to a corporate company. “During deer hunting season, small, independent batches of scrapple are usually made from venison. “People think that I’m just swapping out pork and making scrapple with venison, but that’s not really the case,” says Diltz. Diltz makes pork scrapple sure, but it’s his venison scrapple that has caught the attention of diners in Philadelphia. It’s a dish his family made from scratch every winter, but which he keeps on the Elwood menu all year. Scrapple is a deeply personal dish to Adam Diltz, chef and owner of Elwood in Fishtown. Here’s where to get scrapple in the region, whether served classic and crispy or made modern with unexpected ingredients. What was once a dish that sustained families through the wintertime is now an iconic dish representing our region. Times have changed and so has scrapple in many ways, despite being a nostalgic dish. According to Diltz, scrapple wasn’t usually eaten past March. “When you slaughter your hogs and you make everything else - your sausages and your hams - you’d then make scrapple, too, to get through the winter.” Growing up in Northeastern Pennsylvania, Diltz’s family’s butchering day was usually sometime around Christmas or New Year’s Day. “Scrapple is a butchering day tradition,” says Adam Diltz, owner and chef of Elwood. Though scrapple can be found on menus all year round today, it was, for most of its history, a wintertime food in Pennsylvania’s farmland. Corn is a huge crop that really defined the Philadelphia and Mid-Atlantic region, and then the fact that German settlers came here is a huge part of who we are.” “It is marrying two things that really define our heritage. “I like to say it’s the mix of German sausage making meeting Native American corn crop,” says Amy Strauss, author of Pennsylvania Scrapple: A Delectable History. Scrapple was truly born the moment that cornmeal was added - that was the game changer. Its recipe, like a language, had to be translated into North American farm country, borrowing ingredients that were plentiful and readily available in order for its story to carry on. Like many foods that cross oceans and continents, scrapple had to adapt to its new environment. The repurposing of meat scraps was a thrifty way to reduce waste, plus, its method of preservation gave the dish a long shelf life, making it the perfect food to withstand the trans-Atlantic journey German colonists took to the Philadelphia region in the 17th and 18th centuries. Scrapple, as we know it today, begins with the Pennsylvania Dutch whose German ancestors brought panhaskröppel - which translates roughly to “a slice of pan rabbit” - over from the southwest corner of Germany. Whether you’re a staunch supporter or a harsh critic, scrapple is an undeniably local dish with a story so intertwined with Philadelphia that it has become an integral part of our region’s identity. “No one likes us, we don’t care,” as Jason Kelce once said, and the same applies to our scrapple. And when you diss scrapple, it only seems to make those who love it all the more passionate.
Just like Philadelphia is the underdog of American cities, scrapple is the underdog of the breakfast menu. It’s a dish that has been reimagined by chefs and home cooks who now incorporate it into their own culinary traditions. It’s eaten by locals as a badge of honor and by newcomers as a rite of passage. Scrapple is a point of pride in Philadelphia. The result is a salty and savory slice of fried pork mush that sticks to your ribs.
Once cooked, the scraps of meat are added to a mush of cornmeal, buckwheat flour, and seasoning (oftentimes a blend of thyme, sage, pepper, and other savory spices) and then formed into a loaf and preserved for whenever you’re ready to fry it up and serve.
Traditionally, the recipe calls for pig heads, hooves, hearts, livers, tongues, and any trimmings not used in other pork products - “everything but the oink,” basically.
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