American cooking Recipes & regional stories

Skillet & Sage

A culinary journey through the fifty states

The regional table / Pennsylvania

Scrapple

Published September 23, 2026 · Pennsylvania

Jump to Recipe

A quart of corn meal, buckwheat flour to thicken it very thick, and it must be stirred constantly — the instruction has not changed since before the Civil War.

Scrapple is the best documented dish in Pennsylvania and it got that way by being unglamorous. The oldest full recipe reachable for this article is in Elizabeth E. Lea's Domestic Cookery, Useful Receipts, and Hints to Young Housekeepers, a Quaker housekeeping manual whose readable scan is the Baltimore printing of 1859 by Cushings and Bailey and whose text is the third revised edition. Her entry is nine lines long. Take eight pounds of scraps of pork, that will not do for sausage, boil it in four gallons of water, when tender, chop it fine, strain the liquor and pour it back into the pot, put in the meat, season it with sage, summer savory, salt and pepper to taste; stir in a quart of corn meal; after simmering a few minutes, thicken it with buckwheat flour very thick, it requires very little cooking after it is thickened, but must be stirred constantly. Everything a modern recipe adds to that is decoration. Twenty-one years later a Georgia weekly, the Newnan Herald of 2 March 1880, reprinted a receipt from the American Agriculturist for what is called scrapple, which is extensively used in Pennsylvania, furnished to that magazine by F. E. J. of Pennsylvania: boil head, liver, trimmings from hams and sholders, and skins from pieces intended for lard, until easily separated from the bones, then put them through the sausage cutter; into the strained liquor stir in eaqual quantities of Indian and buck wheat meal, sufficient to make mush, then the chopped meat with salt, pepper and sage; cook a few minutes, stirring constantly; pour into vessels to cool. Being more thorougly cooked than the usual way it keeps better. To serve it, it is sliced and fried. The typographical errors are the paper's. The two grains in equal measure, the liquor used as the cooking water, and the loaf cut cold and fried are all there, a hundred and forty-six years ago.

The absences are as loud as the recipes. Miss Leslie of Philadelphia published Directions for Cookery there in 1837 and the word scrapple does not occur in it once, nor in her Complete Cookery of 1853. Mrs. S. T. Rorer, principal of the Philadelphia Cooking School, wrote the Philadelphia Cook Book in 1886 — a manual of home economics for that city, with a chapter on every part of the pig — and the word appears in it zero times. So does it in The Pennsylvania German Cook Book of 1902, five hundred and sixty recipes compiled at Alliance, Ohio, from contributors writing in from Ohio and Indiana. Scrapple in the nineteenth century was farm and market food that cookbook authors did not think needed writing down, and the newspapers prove it was everywhere anyway: Wilmington's curb-stone markets selling butter, milk, eggs, sausages, scrapple, vegetables and poultry, all fresh from the farm, in a Howard Pyle sketch from Harper's reprinted in the Nebraska Advertiser of 13 January 1881; a Philadelphia five-cent lunch counter offering a plate of scrapple beside pepper pot in 1888; and, best of all, the Savannah Morning News of 24 March 1884 listing the stores for the Greely relief expedition and stopping to explain the word for its readers — boiled meat mixed with corn-meal and buckwheat flour is called scrapple, and 2,000 pounds of scrapple is to be taken, besides 2,000 pounds of pepper-pot, a kind of soup. A Georgia paper the day before called the same two thousand pounds Philadelphia scrapple. The federal government finally wrote a definition of its own in 1970, and it is at 9 CFR 319.280: scrapple shall contain not less than 40 percent meat and/or meat byproducts computed on the basis of the fresh weight, exclusive of bone, and the meal or flour used may be derived from grain and/or soybeans. One caution about the folklore. This dish is always credited to the Pennsylvania Dutch kitchen and that is very likely right, but the German name usually printed alongside it could not be verified in any document opened here — under five spellings it appears nowhere in Lea, in either Leslie, in Rorer, in the 1902 Pennsylvania German book or in a 1915 Bucks County recipe collection. It may well be sound; this article simply cannot vouch for it.

Why this version works

Two grains, not one. Cornmeal alone sets grainy and sandy; buckwheat alone sets gluey and tastes of nothing else. Both nineteenth-century sources use the pair, the 1880 one in equal quantities, and the division of labour is real: the corn gives the sweetness and the crust, the buckwheat gives the bind and the dark savoury note that makes the slice taste older than it is. Buckwheat also has no gluten, so it thickens without turning elastic.

Overnight in the mould is a cooking step. The loaf is not merely cooling, it is setting. Warm scrapple will not hold a slice and will fall to porridge in the pan; twelve hours cold lets the starch retrograde and the gelatin firm, and that is the difference between a slice that crusts and a slice that spreads itself across the skillet.

The broth is the liquid, and there is no other. Lea strains the liquor and pours it back into the pot before the meal goes in; the 1880 version stirs the meal straight into the water the meat came out of, with the small bones strained away. That is the whole flavour mechanism. A scrapple built on water or stock from a carton tastes of cornmeal and sage. One built on four gallons of pork liquor reduced with the meat still in it tastes of pork all the way through, because the gelatin that came out of the skin and bone is what sets the loaf as much as the starch does.

It has to be stirred constantly, and both sources say so. Once the meal is in, the pot is a starch slurry over direct heat, and starch on the bottom of a pot scorches in seconds and taints eight pounds of meat with it. Lea's line is that it requires very little cooking after it is thickened, but must be stirred constantly; the 1880 one says cook a few minutes, stirring it constantly. Neither is being fussy.

Ingredient notes

Cornmeal: Stone-ground yellow, medium grind. The 1880 receipt calls it Indian meal, which is the older name for exactly this. Fine degerminated cornmeal makes a pasty loaf with no texture; coarse polenta never hydrates in the time available and leaves grit in the slice.

The pork: Lea is explicit that this is made of scraps of pork, that will not do for sausage, and the 1880 receipt names head, liver, ham and shoulder trimmings and the skins put aside for lard. Bone-in shoulder is the practical modern equivalent — it carries the collagen a head would have given — and half a pound of liver in with it is not optional if you want the taste to be right. The federal floor is a useful sanity check: 9 CFR 319.280 requires at least 40 percent meat and meat byproducts by fresh weight, which is roughly what this recipe lands on.

Buckwheat flour: Plain buckwheat flour, light or dark, in the same volume as the cornmeal. It is the ingredient people leave out and it is the one that makes the difference between scrapple and fried cornmeal mush. If it is genuinely unobtainable, use more cornmeal and expect a paler, sweeter, sandier loaf, and do not call the result traditional.

Sage and summer savory: Lea names both, in that order, and summer savory is the one nobody uses any more. It is peppery and slightly resinous and it sits under the sage rather than beside it; a teaspoon of dried savory changes the loaf more than the amount suggests. Thyme is a passable stand-in and tastes wrong in a way you can identify.

Step by step

  1. Simmer the pork to shreds. Put the pork shoulder, skin and bones into a large pot with 3 quarts of water, bring to a bare simmer and hold it there, uncovered, for 2½ to 3 hours, skimming the foam in the first twenty minutes. The meat is ready when it falls off the bone under a spoon.
  2. Add the liver at the end. Drop in the liver for the last 20 minutes only. Any longer and it goes chalky and pushes a metallic edge into the whole pot.
  3. Separate and strain. Lift everything out. Strain the broth through a sieve, discarding bone and cartilage, and measure it: you want 2 quarts. Boil it down if there is more, top it up with water if there is less. Skim most of the fat but leave a thin slick — that is what browns the slice later.
  4. Chop the meat fine. Pull the meat and skin from the bones and chop it small with a knife, or pulse it in short bursts in a processor. The nineteenth-century instruction is to put it through the sausage cutter, which is to say small enough to lose its identity in the loaf.
  5. Thicken with the two meals. Return the broth to the pot with the sage, savory, salt, pepper and the pinch of cayenne, and bring it to a simmer. Rain in the cornmeal and buckwheat together, whisking hard, then switch to a wooden spoon and keep it moving over medium-low heat for 25 to 30 minutes. It will go from soup to a mush that holds the track of the spoon.
  6. Stir the meat back in. Add the chopped pork and cook 10 minutes more, stirring constantly and getting into the corners of the pot. Taste now — this is the last chance to salt it, and cold scrapple tastes blander than hot.
  7. Set the loaf. Scrape it into two greased 9-by-5-inch loaf tins, bang them down on the counter to settle it, smooth the tops and cool to room temperature. Cover and refrigerate at least 12 hours before cutting.
If the slices break up in the pan, the loaf was cut too warm, cut too thin, or moved too early. Chill it properly, cut a full half inch, and then leave the slice alone for a full six minutes before trying to turn it — the crust is what holds it together and it forms late. If the fried slice is dense and dry rather than soft inside, there was too much meal for the broth; there is no fixing that loaf, but the next one wants a quarter less. A loaf that will not set at all after a night in the fridge was thickened too little or built on a thin broth, and it can be saved: tip it back into a pot, cook it down another fifteen minutes with a further two tablespoons of cornmeal, and set it again.

Storage and make-ahead

The uncut loaf keeps 5 days wrapped in the refrigerator and is better on day two than on the day it was made, which is why the old receipts talk about how well it keeps. Slice it as you need it rather than all at once.

It freezes better than almost anything else in the pork repertoire: 3 months, either as a whole wrapped loaf or as slices frozen flat on a sheet then bagged. Fry the slices straight from frozen over slightly lower heat and give them a couple of extra minutes a side.

What to serve with it

Eggs, obviously, and the traditional third thing on the plate is something sweet and sharp — apple butter, or maple syrup, or ketchup, and the argument about which is not going to be settled here either. A cold, hard apple works as well as any of them. If it is dinner rather than breakfast, fried scrapple with sauerkraut and boiled potatoes is the older way of eating it.

From the recipe box / Pennsylvania

Scrapple

Pork scraps simmered to shreds, the broth thickened with equal weights of cornmeal and buckwheat, seasoned with sage and summer savory, set in a loaf overnight and fried in slices — printed in Pennsylvania in 1880 and defined by the federal meat regulations in 1970.

Prep
30 min
Cook
3 hr 45 min
Total
4 hr 15 min, plus overnight
Serves
8
Calories
455 per serving

Ingredients

Scale

Instructions

  1. Simmer the pork shoulder, skin and bones in 3 quarts water, uncovered, 2½–3 hours, skimming early, until the meat falls from the bone.
  2. Add the liver for the last 20 minutes only, then lift everything out.
  3. Strain the broth, discard bone and cartilage, and measure out 2 quarts, skimming most but not all of the fat.
  4. Chop the meat, skin and liver fine.
  5. Bring the broth back to a simmer with the sage, savory, salt, pepper and cayenne, then whisk in the cornmeal and buckwheat flour together and stir over medium-low heat 25–30 minutes to a thick mush.
  6. Stir the chopped meat back in and cook 10 minutes more, stirring constantly. Taste and salt.
  7. Pack into two greased 9x5-inch loaf tins, cool, cover and refrigerate at least 12 hours.
  8. To serve, cut ½-inch slices and fry in lard over medium heat, 6–7 minutes a side, turning once, until deeply crusted.

Nutrition

Fat28 g (10 g saturated)
Sodium780 mg
Protein24 g
Servingtwo ½-inch fried slices
Calories455
Cholesterol150 mg
Carbohydrates30 g (1 g sugar, 3 g fiber)

Nutrition is an estimate calculated from the listed ingredients and is provided as a courtesy, not as dietary advice.

Questions readers ask

Do I have to use liver?

Not to make something good, but yes to make this. The 1880 Pennsylvania receipt names liver in the first line, with the head and the ham and shoulder trimmings, and the flavour people recognise as scrapple rather than as fried mush comes largely from it. Half a pound against three pounds of shoulder is a restrained amount; if you leave it out, add an extra half pound of shoulder and accept a milder, plainer loaf.

Is this a Pennsylvania Dutch dish?

By every account, yes, and this article is careful about how it says so. The cookery is German — grain-thickened meat broth set in a loaf and fried is a technique the Palatinate brought with it — and the geography of the nineteenth-century record, Philadelphia and the Delaware Valley, matches where those families settled. What could not be verified from anything opened here is the German name usually printed for it, which does not occur in Lea, in either Miss Leslie, in Mrs. Rorer, in the 1902 Pennsylvania German Cook Book or in a 1915 collection of Bucks County recipes. Absence from those five is not proof the word is wrong; it is the reason it is not asserted here.

Why does my scrapple fall apart in the pan?

Three causes, in order of likelihood. It was not cold enough — twelve hours in the refrigerator is a minimum, not a suggestion. It was cut too thin; a half inch is right and a quarter inch is not. Or it was turned too soon: the crust that holds the slice together takes six or seven minutes over medium heat to form, and poking at it before then guarantees the failure it was meant to prevent. A little more buckwheat in the next batch will also help, because it binds where cornmeal only bulks.

What exactly is scrapple allowed to contain?

The federal standard is short enough to quote whole. Under 9 CFR 319.280, scrapple shall contain not less than 40 percent meat and/or meat byproducts computed on the basis of the fresh weight, exclusive of bone, mechanically separated species may be used in accordance with § 319.6, and the meal or flour used may be derived from grain and/or soybeans. That is the entire section, adopted in 1970 and amended in 1978 and 1982. Note what it does not do: it sets no minimum for cornmeal, requires no buckwheat, names no seasoning and says nothing about Pennsylvania.