Scrapple

German immigrants in 17th-century Pennsylvania, also known as the Amish, were tasked with finding palatable ways to use up every part of their livestock. When it came time for slaughtering their pigs, tendons, hide, liver, brains, stomach, and ears abounded. Never ones to waste, Amish women bound the nutritious scraps with cornmeal, buckwheat, and the meaty stock leftover from boiling the animal. They cooked pots of the porcine gruel on the stove for hours, then poured it into a pan to firm up. Anyone could cut off pieces and fry them into the part-crispy, part-mushy slices of ambiguous, meaty deliciousness known as scrapple.

Today, companies mass-produce scrapple, but any home cook can make it themselves. Fans of the meaty loaf tend to use it like any breakfast sausage patty—topped with eggs, sandwiched between bread, and even crumbled over pizza.