I believe souse is what someone in the Midwest or Northeast would call “headcheese,” which is more or less pork trimmings in aspic. Scrapple is pork…not even trimmings, more like a slurry of fat and meat, with cornmeal or buckwheat flour added to stiffen it.
They’re definitely on the same family tree (AKA the “we waste nothing” tree), but not the same thing. Headcheese/souse is good, by the way.
Also, that meatloaf recipe sounds like prison food. 
Raised in Glen Burnie, M D. Scrapple came from the A & P. 400 miles sounds generous; Mrs. Burpo is from Pittsburgh and was not familiar with the delicacy–what does SHE know? Bloody state only knows chocolate, beer and zombies!
I think I’ve found my long-lost twin. :sniff, tearing up: You even got the precise quote.
Alright madmonk, ‘fess up where you’re from–hominy grits is a Suthun’ dish. (bad dialect, sorry)
Beef tongue and heart.
Rabbit (Tastes like chicken!!) (Why the fuck don’t we just have chicken then?).
Rocky mountain oysters.
Grandma?
Hah, that’s funny, because even though I’m from Maryland (Gaithersburg), I always thought of Scrapple as being more Pennsylvanian than anything else. Maybe it’s a rural PA thing.
Oh yes that brings back memories. It is a wonderful flavor combination. We also had tongue occasionally and I love that. Chopped liver.
Clothilde, lovely story - and frankly, my dad’s cooking extended to hotdogs and frozen pizza - the salt and pepper on the meatloaf - my dad would have never thought of that.
My grandmother made meat and cheese pies for Easter - you can google “Italian Meat Pie” - this looks close Italian Easter Meat Pie Recipe | King Arthur Baking. Its one of those ethnic traditions that I hope doesn’t die out (and thanks to the internet probably won’t). Not cheap, but really good. There is an Easter sweet pie - ricotta, sugar, eggs and lemon - to go with it.
And I live in lutefisk central - but having no Norwegian or Swedish family, avoided it - around here, its uncommon to have NOT had to eat lutefisk.
You’re probably right. I seem to remember most of the scrapple labels mentioning Pennsylvania Dutch.
Head cheese and Souse were two different things; I worked a deli after school and the first time I saw souse, I thought I would sing my lunch: faintly yellow gelatinous base with lemon slices, et al, thrown in and A TONGUE FLOATING IN THE MIDDLE. Head cheese looked like pink particle board pieces suspended in some…grey shit. Didn’t sell much of either, thank Lord Frith.
My wife’s family comes from that area, and she has some Mennonite blood, so they ate lots of weird stuff. I don’t much like scrapple but they ate and we ate pig’s stomach - the stomach of a pig washed out and stuffed with sausage and potatoes. Quite good. We can’t get it out here because the pigs stomach they sold in the Housewife’s market in Oakland had holes in it, which doesn’t quite work.
We both grew up eating tongue, which you have to special order out here. I ate lots of Jewish food growing up which was quite common in Queens but uncommon here - whitefish and sable, for instance. My mother made a great borscht, the only way I like beets.
I still cook and eat the gizzard and heart that comes with a whole chicken. The rest of my family refuses to even try these treats, so more for me.
I didn’t know pig’s feet were unusual until I got to college. Cracklin’s and sweet potato, is that unusual?
My mom claims she used to eat squirrel brains out of the skull (think Indiana Jones eating monkey brains.) I’ve seen Grandma cook all manner of animal, including 'possums, so I believe her story. My dad loved olive loaf (lunch meat). IMO, it doesn’t get much weirder than that stuff.
When we weren’t eating fried chicken gizzards, they would some times buy Pope’s nose by the pound. Don’t know how it got that name, but it was the tail of the turkey. Don’t remember how they prepared it. Fried or in the oven? Doesn’t have any meat, or very little, lots of grease and flavor.
We would wash it down with powdered milk mixed with water. For a long time I didn’t know you could buy milk ready made.
My mom would cook leeks somehow. Steamed or simmered in water and then drained over night. The next day she served them with a vinagrette sauce. They were pretty good.
Cottage cheese and egg noodles. The noodles were boiled and the cottage cheese was cold. Add a little salt, delicious.
Mmmm, steamers. A.k.a. long-neck, Ipswich, or soft-shelled clams. Which can also be fried as whole belly clams.
Little necks are not as good steamed, IMO. Sometimes when you order a bucket of steamers you get little necks which annoys me.
I see Beach Plum Jelly regularly in our summer wanderings around New England. Should I mail you some?
My mom never made creamed chipped beef on toast, but she did make creamed eggs and toast. Hardboil eggs, slice them over toast, pour cream sauce over all of it.
One of our most-loved holiday traditions is dandelion salad every Easter. We eat it at Easter because you have to pick the greens early in the spring before they blossom. Greens, boiled potatoes, hard-boiled eggs, and onions, topped with a dressing of hot bacon grease, cider vinegar, and sugar… Mmm-mmm.
And at Gramma’s house, ground beef recipes were likely to actually be made with ground groundhog. I don’t think anyone in the family still hunts them, though, since Granpap died.
I’ve not put butter on a digestive biscuit since I left home - neither have I eaten a puff ball in many a year.
I grew up in northern Vigrinia, but my family is old Virginia and norther Virginia just kind of grew up around us. My grandparents used to keep hogs and they’d make scrapple when they slaughtered some of them.
The other thing we ate was pork rinds. My wife had never had either pork rinds, nor scrapple until I enlightened her.
A lady brought a cake into the office we worked in one time, it was a spice cake with mocha frosting, and she told us it was made from pinto beans. It was good.
Thought of another one - my dad and I used to love eggs, hallfway to hard boiled, with butter, all mashed up in a dish. And yes, sometimes we had saltines with it. The sweet of the butter, the saltiness and cracker crunch, and the gooey-ish egg? That IS comfort food.
So MsWhatsit, you are not alone.
ETA - I haven’t had that in 30 + Years - I know what I’M having for dinner!
Blood pudding after animals had been slaughtered was always a treat in my childhood.