[AT] Scrapple & Head Cheese

[Billy Hood]

George et al
continued

I had read about scrapple, but had never seen any until 1966.  During spring break, a group of college ag students were recruited to do a range vegetation survey on some South Texas ranches.  Three of us were assigned to the Burg ranch near Harper in Kerr County.  We would stay with the ranch family.  This was a very German  operation, the Burg having been shortened from some longer German surname when they immigrated to the US.  They were a self sufficient bunch that had several sections of land with Hereford cows, but they still had hogs, chickens, a smokehouse and all of the trappings of old time farmers/ranchers.  They had just started using the summer kitchen after cooking in the house in winter, which was a log/plank structure removed from the house and kept heat out of the main house in the Texas summers.  They had a Mexican cook but the middle Mrs. Burg (3 generations of Burg women on the place) was in there cooking also. They cooked eggs, sausage, bacon, biscuits, flour tortillas ect for everyone, but she also asked if we wanted some scrapple on the side.  One of the other guys asked what it was and said it was trimmings and head from the hog with cornmeal.  The others were not interested, but I was always game for something new to eat.  They had made it in loaf bread pans and she sliced it off in thick slices and browned it on a griddle.  It was rich, but I would have asked for seconds, except for watching my manners,  The ranch foreman was not bashful and he asked for more and said to give the Aggie some more too as he was too dumb to ask for it.  I found that they had made it for as long as anyone could remember in that family.  They spoke German or Dutch and called it something in German that I did not remember.  Ten years later, my wife found a scrapple recipe from Pa and we tried it when killing hogs.  It was not as good as I remembered from Harper, but we did eat all of it.  Ours tended to crumble and you scrambled it rather than fry slices, but you could  scramble it with fresh hen fruit and it went over pretty good.  

When discussing hog killing on the previous post, I left out my most favorite part at any slaughter party--the liver.  I love liver fixed any way, but especially with onions.  I even make a mean Cajun dirty rice.  But the best liver is that cooked immediately after taken warm from the carcass.  We always had the liver for lunch  on killing day and when I kill a deer, hog, beef or whatever, we eat the liver on the first day.  For the first half of my life I spent much of my time following a dog hunting quail.  I have always been fortunate to have good dogs, good friends to hunt with and many places to hunt.  We usually dressed the morning quail at lunch and put them on ice and dressed the rest at supper.  I always carefully saved the livers and hearts from these Bob Whites and we browned them with onions and scrambled eggs over them to eat with flour tortillas as appetizers while cooking the real supper in camp.  Folks, if you haven't tried it, you don't know what you are missing.  30 to 50 quail livers and hearts don't make much of a pile, but fresh, there is nothing like it. 
Bear
Now I am hungry for Souse, scrapple, a good sausage sandwich, and lots of other things that are not on my approved diet.

  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: George Willer<mailto:gwill at toast.net> 
  To: Antique tractor email discussion group<mailto:at at lists.antique-tractor.com> 
  Sent: Sunday, February 22, 2004 12:16 PM
  Subject: Re: [AT] Scrapple & Head Cheese


  David,

  Our ponhaas (scrapple) was made with a LOT more corn meal.  Much like 50/50
  horse meat/rabbit meat mix is... 50 horses and 50 rabbits.