Quantity and Taste
Courtesy of The New York Public Library
More today from our series eating while poor based on WPA stories collected during the Great Depression. Depression era restaurants in New York City’s Bowery district that catered to the poor focused on quantity and taste instead of appearances. Inside the kitchens, these eateries had been as clean as any fancier restaurants. Usually customers had a view into the kitchen where no one tried to keep an ingredient or cooking technique a secret. Delicious tasting meals featured less expensive cuts of meat such as pig’s feet, knuckles, cheeks, snouts, or head. What is the most unusual meal you have enjoyed, when, and where?
Pennsylvania Scrapple Recipe
Clean a pig's head and boil until the flesh comes off bones. When cold, chop meat fine and weigh. Skim grease from liquid in which head was cooked, strain the liquid and return to fire. When it boils, add cornmeal in the proportion of two pounds meal to three pounds meat. Cook to a mush. Put in the meat and add two teaspoons salt, one quarter teaspoon pepper and one teaspoon sage for each pound of meat. Bring to boiling point, cook slowly twenty minutes, stirring constantly. Then simmer thirty to forty minutes longer in a double boiler. Turn into pans to cool. When firm, slice and fry. This is especially good when fried and served with sausage.
Crosby Gaige, New York World’s Fair Cook Book (New York: Double Day, Doran and Company, 1939)
