In America, there is an almost holiness for the German Scrapple in being renowned for it's goodness. My Mom used to concoct a like recipe which I adored and still do, but instead of corn meal as a thickener, oatmeal was the product as that was more readily available.
From my youngest memories, I can still see that ghastly hogs head sticking out of a pot being boiled up, as Mom would carve off the jowels, as people do not comprehend that French cuisine was peasant food and the spices in the food were all there to cover up the rotten meat, so people could eat the meal.
That is what nutmeg was used for. It was such a strong flavor that it covered up rotten meat taste, and people eating it all the time, just started to equate it with how food should taste like garlic expounds that rotten meat flavor which people do like as canines do.
Scrapple was what was left over of no value really that people did not want to eat. It was the jowels, the heart, the liver and a high content of fat, all soaked up in meal to make that valuable meat and fat content go as far as possible with the available salt and pepper on hand.
This put into pans and cooled, was then sliced off and fried in hog lard, where it was a sausage type product that was just a delight to me then as it is to this day. Fried deep brown it was delicious when eaten on buttered toast on very cold mornings.
For that reason, I have decided to place back into the public sphere the old wursts or puddings, depending on the German or English for people to maybe go through the effort in trying, as these are interesting, cost effective and often times quite good.
The following recipe is more of a mincemeat type, as that is what the English flavor mostly was, while the German was mostly a fried sausage type without the exotic spices.
These recipes were all huge, as big families and big appetites from hard labor required making large quantities at one time, as there was not the time to repeat the processes.
To make Plumb-Porridge:—Take a leg and shin of beef to ten gallons of water, boil it very tender, and when the broth is strong, strain it out, wipe the pot, and put in the broth again; slice six penny-loaves thin, cutting off the top and bottom; put some of the liquor to it, cover it up, and let it stand a quarter of an hour, and then put it in your pot, let it boil a quarter of an hour, then put in five pounds of currants, let them boil a little, and put in five pounds of raisins, and two pounds of prunes, and let them boil till they swell; then put in three quarters of an ounce of mace, half an ounce of cloves, two nutmegs, all of them beat fine, and mix it with a little liquor cold, and put them in a very little while, and take off the pot, and put in three pounds of sugar, a little salt, a quart of sack, and a quart of claret, the juice of two or three lemons; you may thicken with sagoe instead of bread, if you please; pour them into earthen pans, and keep them for use.
This was basically all the food groups in bread, meat and fruit, with enough vinegar to keep the scurvy at bay, and one would not be stove up from eating this concoction with your daily bread.
Chilled this would keep for some time and it was considered high eating in it's time.
Considering how many meals which could be obtained in the meat and marrow of a shin of beef, when bread was added as in meatloaf and fruit swelled up, it was a way of stretching the meat supply, meaning one was eating well, instead of not at all.
The olde lessons must be remembered. As my Gram said, "Dip and deal, save a bit for every meal". It is how people survived.
agtG
