America’s Tastiest Breakfast Meat

The most misunderstood and underrated breakfast food served in America.

Photo of uncooked (bottom) and cooked (top) Scrapple by Author

Sitting on one of the hard plastic chairs provided by the Seattle-Tacoma Airport — Gate D-3, waiting to board the Alaskan Air flight from Seattle to Philadelphia, I struck up a conversation with a woman who was en route to a conference of food marketing executives grandiosely named the 17th Annual Food Industry Summit.

Working in the food purveying business, she naturally was interested in the care and feeding of the native Philadelphian.

“Is the tribal diet all Philly cheese steaks, soft pretzels, water ice, Tasty Cakes, tomato pies, hoagies and pork sandwiches?” she asked, obviously having done her homework.

“Not all,” this food lover (me) told her.

“You’re forgetting scrapple,” I said.

She’d never heard of scrapple much less eaten it.

And she was in the food business.

Scrapple is primarily a breakfast phenomenon in the Eastern Mid-Atlantic United States ( Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina and Washington D. C.

The recipe was introduced to the country in the 17th and 18th century by German immigrants settling in…