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the ride is this upcoming weekend, stop by
but since you asked for a story heres an oldie but a goodie
Scrapple
After the hams and bacon have been put down in cure and the sausage is all ground and the lard rendered and the feets pickled and the snouts soused, you take what's left, mostly the head, and make scrapple. Now, I have seen a lot of modern recipes for making scrapple. Most say to start with a shoulder or some such good piece of meat. Blasphemy! Everybody knows there are better ways to use a shoulder. Such wanton waste would not have been tolerated back when times were tight and folks had to make the most of what they had. Besides, head meats have unique tastes and textures, as anyone who has tasted barbacoa de cabeza can attest, and definitely makes the best scrapple. If you have to use store-bought meat, look for shoulders. You will need some skin and cartilage for gelatin; therefore, the picnic end will work better than the Boston butt. You could also include a few feet for the same reason.
Here's how we used to make scrapple back when I was young. Nothing was ever measured – it was made by feel and taste.
Ingredients:
1 Grandmother to make sure everything is done "just so"
1 Mother to do most of the preparation. Overseen by ingredient #1
2 Children, big enough to stir the pot but not smart enough to be elsewhere
Hogs’ heads (number depending upon how many hogs were killed)
Hearts and about ¼ of the livers
Various and sundry scraps not used to make other delicacies
Salt, pepper, sage and maybe a little celery salt to highlight the flavors (optional)
Cornmeal (not self-rising), preferably stone ground white but plain yellow works fine
The feature attraction is the cleaned head. Remove the eyeballs (the brains were removed on killing day and scrambled with eggs the next morning). Break the head(s) into manageable pieces with a cleaver, and cook them down in a kettle of boiling water until the meat is easily pulled and the gelatin is released from the skin and connective tissue. Skim most of the fat from the stock and save. Pull all of the meat from the heads and chop up the chunks. Cook the liver and heart and whatever else wasn't used in other delicacies and grind them separately. Get a tote-sack full of corn meal and keep it handy. Put the meat, heart, and other scraps (except liver) back into the simmering kettle of stock. Add liver until you can taste it but the liver flavor does not predominate. Add salt and celery salt - the cornmeal will take a lot of salt so you get this mixture fairly salty. Stir. Taste. Add sage and pepper to taste - not too much, now. Stir. Taste. Pass the spoon around so everybody can pass judgment. When it's right, you should taste salt first, then liver (but not too strong), rich pork meat flavor and a hint of sage. When everybody, especially Ingredient #1, agrees that it couldn't possibly be better, bring out the cornmeal and kids.
Now comes the hard part! Slowly stir in the cornmeal with a long wooden spoon - not too much at a time, now. Keep stirring. Add cornmeal. Add some fat. Keep stirring. Add cornmeal. Add some fat. Keep stirring as the mixture starts to get thick. Keep stirring. Not thick enough yet. Add a little more corn meal. Keep stirring. A little more fat until there is a slight sheen to the surface but no visible oil. Keep stirring.
"Just where do you think you're going? Get back here and stir that pot!!"
As the mixture thickens and you fine-tune the ratio of fat to cornmeal, it will start to separate from the sides of the kettle – a sure sign that it is done and will set properly. This is a good thing 'cause the kids are about tuckered. Ladle it into lightly greased, shallow, rectangular or square tin pans to a thickness of about 2 ½ inches. Be careful - it's still hot! Start slapping it down with the palm of your hand. Slap it like you mean it! SLAP IT! If you are doing it right, your hand should be beet red, sore and covered with a light coat of pig oil. Good. Now let the pans cool, cover with waxed paper and put them in the Frigidaire or cool pantry.
Next morning, remove scrapple from the pan and slice about 3/8" thick. Lightly flour both sides. Heat about ¼" of bacon grease or lard in an iron skillet until it just starts to smoke. Fry until the outside starts to crisp but the inside is still soft. Drain briefly on a paper towel. Serve with syrup and eggs.
There's nothing else like it in this world!!
Hog Killing Time
In November or early December, about 15 animals from 1.25 to 1.5 years old were penned for fattening. The customary penning period was a month or five weeks. The hogs were fed twice daily -- The amount per head at each feeding, was about two quarts of grain (wheat, oats, or rye) which had been soaked previously overnight in a barrel. The animals were given fresh water daily and the pens kept clean. When each animal weighed from 350 to 400 pounds it was considered ready to be killed.
Previous to the day set for the killing, a pit was dug in the workyard and over it was set a large vat made of heavy plank, about 7 feet long, 2.5 feet wide flaring at the top, and 30 inches deep with a sheet iron bottom. Early in the morning of the killing, the vat was filled with water and a fire built in the pit underneath to heat the water for scalding the hogs.
For the actual killing, one of the men used a .22 gauge rifle. The animals were shot one at a time, bled, and plunged into the vat of hot water (147 degrees) then put on a platform and scraped with iron scrapers to remove the hair. After which, they were hung on an elevated pole by a gambrel stick put through the hamstrings of the animal (the gambrel stick varied in length from 26 to 30 inches, depending on the size of the hog). After the animal was hung, the viscera was removed while the body was still warm and the body cavity thoroughly washed. The carcasses of the animals were then left suspended in the open air overnight to cool out.
The fat from all the intestines was removed with a dull knife and put aside to be rendered the next day. The small intestines from one or two hogs, and the large ones and stomachs from several were saved; the small ones for casings fro raw-meat sausage; the large ones for liver and blood sausage; the stomachs for headcheese. These organs were turned inside out, laid on a small board and scraped with a blunt edged tool to clean them, then put into a salt-water solution until the next day when the sausage meat was prepared for the filling, or stuffing.
On the second day several processes for taking care of the meat were going on at the same time by the different helpers; but the following was the procedure:
The heads of the animals were cut off and thoroughly cleaned; the jowls removed and put aside; the remainder of the heads was cooked in huge iron kettles (each 20 gallon capacity) over open fires out in the yard until the meat fell off the bones. The meat was then ground and put back in the liquor. Either corn meal or graham was stirred into this boiling a sausage-like preparation. It was stirred constantly and cooked until the meat floated about in the kettle on its own grease. This mixture, called scrapple, was then poured into stone pans. As it congealed, the fat rose to the tope, hardened, and that sealed and preserved the product. For use later, the scrapple was sliced out and used cold, or fried to a crisp brown and served for a breakfast dish with applesauce.
After the heads had been taken off, each carcass was placed on a platform and a cut made the entire length of the back. The feet (with hoofs) were sawed off and discarded; the ankles -- called pigs' feet -- were taken off and put with the jowls. The leaf lard was removed and put aside to be cut up for rendering. With an ax or clever, a cut was made each side of the backbone to release it and the ribs. The former could then be skinned out by taking hold of the tail. The backbone was cut into sections; the ribs peeled out and cut across then they, and the backbone, were put with the jowls and pigs' feet to be salted down. This bone meat was salted in a large wooden barrel. Later when brine had formed, it was taken off each week, boiled, cooled, then put back on the meat. Mother usually cooked a large kettle of the bone meat on Saturday for over the weekend and we enjoyed some of it cold for the Sunday evening meal.
When the ribs had been peeled out, the hams, shoulders, and sides were cut out and trimmed into proper shape. The trimmings were saved for sausage. The trimmed pieces were laid on clean planks overhead in the smokehouse and salted with dry salt. The length of time the pieces lay in the salt depended on the weather - in freezing weather it took longer - the usual time was four weeks for hams; five weeks for the shoulder; and the sides (for bacon) less than the hams. After the meat had lain in the salt the required time, it was washed and hung on poles above a slatted floor in the second story of the smokehouse. There it was smoked with a smudge fire built on the hearth below - on the first floor. The smudge was of hardwood, either alder, oak or hickory, and was tended carefully so no heat reached the meat, -- only smoke. The meat was smoked until it was a golden brown in color.
After the meat was smoked, it was packed in half-ground salt, or in oats, in large dry-goods boxes. Some years the pieces were sewed separately in squares of unbleached muslin and the outside of the cloth painted with ochre.
While the carcasses were being dissected, the leaf lard was cut into cubes and rendered (clarified by melting) in the iron kettles, then stored in 5-gallons cans. That was the first grade lard. The fat from the intestines was then rendered; it was considered second grade shortening.
The trimmings from hams, shoulders, and sides were ground with the hearts for sausage. This ground meat was mixed and seasoned in a large container -- usually a washtub -- Ed or Louis did the mixing with his hands as there was a large quantity of the meat. Small samples were fried at intervals and tasted to see if it was seasoned properly. When it was pronounced OK, the casings were taken from the brine and put on the spout of the sausage filler, the plunger depressed and the casings filled -- or, the "sausage was stuffed" -- and coiled in a large container set on the floor. Someone, usually Louis, guided the casing with his hands as it was being stuffed so that it filled evenly. After the sausage was filled, some was fried and put in 5-gallon cans or other suitable containers, and covered with hot lard to preserve it. A portion of the filled sausage was looped over a pole suspended above the smudge and smoked. It was delicious eating. If there were not enough casings for all the sausage meat, the remainder was made into patties and fried down. It too, was covered with hot lard as a preservative.
The large intestines and the stomachs were filled by hand. The livers were cooked and ground, then smoked after being put into the casings. When the hogs bled, some blood was caught in a container and stirred until it cooled to prevent coagulation. Cubes of the cooked head meat were mixed with the blood; the large ends of the intestines were filled with this product, then cooked; they were stirred meanwhile to distribute the cubes of meat evenly as the mixture solidified. When the sausages were finished, they were smoked. The stomachs were filled with head meat cut into strips; they were then cooked, laid on a board and weighted to press them flat, after which the so-called headcheese was smoked to preserve it.
We always looked forward, at each hog-killing time, to having at least one meal each of sweetbread (pancreas), brain, heart, and liver; to us those meals were treats.
Later in the season, a portion of the smoked meat and some of the first-grade lard was sold or exchanged for groceries. Home-cured meat was always in demand, and all of it could have been disposed of, except that it was needed for household use.
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