[Sca-cooks] GIFILLTE FISH ::WAS::: TURKEY GRAVY

[Philip & Susan Troy]

Etain1263 at aol.com wrote:

> --
> [ Picked text/plain from multipart/alternative ]
> In a message dated 11/29/2001 7:13:19 PM Eastern Standard Time,
> Seton1355 at aol.com writes:
>
>
>
>><<What is the difference in the ingredients ( and "ick" factor) between
>>scrapple and head cheese?>>
>>
>
> I'm not sure the ingredients are all that different..but head cheese isn't
> ground..it's just chunks of  said "ingredients" in a sort of gelled matrix.
> No buckwheat or cornmeal is added..as there is in scrapple.
>
> Etain

Yeah, that's pretty much it. The same meat ingredients (the head, tail,
maybe a chine bone and a foot or two) and probably the same spices are
cooked until they're more or less falling off the bone, then removed
from same, and chopped to some varying degree. In the case of head
cheese the cooking liquid is strained pretty carefully, possibly
clarified, then cooked down until it will form a fairly solid jelly
(sometimes vinegar is added, depending on the prevailing traditions of
your particular culture). For scrapple corn meal or buckwheat [meal?] is
    added and the whole thing is boiled until it'll set up when cool,
for slicing and frying. Scrapple may end up including liver and other
internal organs, sort of like polenta haggis.

There's probably greater variation among head cheese forms because it is
eaten all over Europe, while scrapple appears to be more or less
exclusive to a particular area of the U.S. where there's a PA Dutch
influence; mostly Pennsylvania, Delaware, and Maryland. I'm speculating
about Delaware, I confess, but it seems unlikely you'd find it in PA and
Maryland and _not_ in Delware. Could there be a state law forbidding it?

Adamantius
--
Phil & Susan Troy

troy at asan.com

"It was so blatant that Roger threw at him.  Clemens gets away with
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let him get away with it, it's going  to continue." -- Joe Torre, 9/98