eating scrapple | What is scrapple? Underappreciated breakfast meat? Gross pig offal? On this scrapple blog we will answer these questions and more!

You're at your kitchen table and scrapple is sitting there on your plate next to your eggs and pancakes. Or you're at the diner and there's a beautiful side dish of crispy scrapple slices sitting there.

Before you dig in to the scrapple, what do you put on top of it?

Every scrapple lover has their own answer to this question.

Nothing!

Ketchup!

Maple syrup!!

These are some of the standards that scrapple lovers are most passionate about, and I wanted to get an idea of

1. What are the definitive scrapple toppings? and
2. Are there any odder scrapple toppings out there we can all learn from?

I put the question out there to the Scrapple Facebook Page and was not disappointed.

I counted up the answers and below are the not-at-all-scientific results.

It probably isn't too difficult to find scrapple in Lancaster, Pennsylvania -- possibly the heart of Pennsynvania Dutch Country. But it certainly doesn't hurt to know a few go-to locations when you're riding your buggy through town and absolutely need your scrapple fix. Based on the reviews from the Travel Channel, the Neptune Diner might be such that place.

Why would Neptune Diner be a go-to spot to eat scrapple in Lancaster? Well, watch this Travel Channel video on scrapple at the diner and we'll discuss it on the other end:

"Any day with scrapple is like Christmas!" says Gregg S. on our Scrapple Facebook page. Well, I guess that's true, but technically only one day a year is actually Christmas.

On that wonderful day, how do you incorporate scrapple into your Christmas festivities? Maybe a side dish along with some sort of casserole. Or maybe scrapple and eggs as you unwrap gifts. Man, that sounds delicious. But I'm wondering if we can do even more.

Here are a few ideas to make scrapple a bigger part of everyone's Christmas:

1. Scrapple Christmas Stockings

Mom, Dad, Little Susie, Fido - sure the whole family gets a stocking over the fireplace. But what does that say about your choice in breakfast meat? Absolutely nothing. Which is why we should all be hanging scrapple Christmas stockings by the chimney with care.

Bonus: I bet a brick of scrapple would slide right in to that stocking. Shopping just got easier!

It's election season which, of course, got me thinking about scrapple. (but really, when am I not thinking about scrapple?)

Anyway, I wondered, have any of our Presidents been scrapple lovers?

I'm sure, of the 44 that have lived in the White House, several of them have enjoyed a slice or two of scrapple. But it looks like the only US President with any real evidence of eating scrapple in the White House is our 15th, President James Buchanan. 

From Sarah Marshall's All the Presidents' Menus post:

While compiling this list I attempted as often as possible to learn not what the presidents ate at state functions and inaugural dinners but during their solitary breakfasts and family suppers—in other words, their comfort foods.

James Buchanan: Beef, mutton, venison, ham, terrapin, calf’s head dressed as terrapin, Pennsylvania Dutch specialties such as scrapple and succotash, moss rose cake, peach charlotte, Confederate pudding and Jeff Davis pie, grape pie, and ice cream.

This makes sense since he is also our only President from Pennsylvania, a state that knows a thing or two about scrapple. From PA to DC, Buchanan proudly brought one of his boyhood comfort foods along.

Of course The Most Interesting Man in the World eats his scrapple the correct way:

Scrapple on, my friends.