As it turns out, Metafilter didn't invent snarky chat OR thread drift

December 5, 2009 3:45 PM

The Great Scrapple Correspondence of 1872 In which a plate of pork gets bean-plated.
posted by jacquilynne (27 comments total)

mmmm . . . scrapple . . .
posted by Sassyfras at 3:52 PM on December 5, 2009

Metafilter: a “culinary fraud upon the stomach”
posted by idiopath at 3:54 PM on December 5, 2009

love me some scrapple
posted by keli at 3:59 PM on December 5, 2009

If I hear that "bean plating" metaphor one more time....
posted by crapmatic at 4:25 PM on December 5, 2009 [3 favorites]

For those who abhor the barbarism of cornmeal, there's goetta.

mmm, goetta.
posted by toodleydoodley at 4:30 PM on December 5, 2009 [3 favorites]

Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose. Scrapple still kicks ass.
posted by chihiro at 4:35 PM on December 5, 2009

Reader "X.Y.Z." on the need for the middle class to live within their means:

any man with $1,200 a year in New-York ought to live in an attic

So I guess the housing situation there hasn't changed much in the last century or so.
posted by serathen at 4:41 PM on December 5, 2009

God, that was funny. It is nice to be reminded that although there's a lot of hand-wringing about how the internet has made society less polite and quicker to snark, in fact this kind of scrapping (scrappling?) has always existed.
posted by hurdy gurdy girl at 4:51 PM on December 5, 2009 [1 favorite]

Comparing scrapple to spam is like comparing homemade grits to instant oatmeal. From that one line of the article, I'm wondering if the author has eaten either. The article is funny, though.
posted by crataegus at 5:18 PM on December 5, 2009

Everything but the squeal.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 5:22 PM on December 5, 2009

What a funny blog post! I forget that folks writing for the NYT are normal Internet citizens just like us.
posted by Nelson at 5:39 PM on December 5, 2009

Great-grandpop was a letterhack hipster.
posted by Ron Thanagar at 7:25 PM on December 5, 2009

mmmm . . . scrapple . . .
posted by gudrun at 8:24 PM on December 5, 2009

By the fifth day, most letters paid only lip service to scrapple. The frugal nature of the dish became an opportunity to hold forth on everything from the rising cost of living to women’s ruinous spending habits. As X. Y. Z. saw it, at the heart of the “great scrapple correspondence” lay the central question of the nineteenth century: “How shall the middle classes live?”

Yep. The more things change . . .
posted by jason's_planet at 8:53 PM on December 5, 2009

If I hear that "bean plating" metaphor one more time.... I'll take bean plating over "Eponysterical!" any time. Stupid from the start and even more trite.
posted by Daddy-O at 8:57 PM on December 5, 2009 [2 favorites]

at least Scrapple is better than Snapple... seriously...
posted by oneswellfoop at 9:41 PM on December 5, 2009

MetaFilter: the pseudonymous “usernames,” the off-topic ranting, the preoccupation with pork fat.
posted by GuyZero at 10:57 PM on December 5, 2009 [1 favorite]

MetaFilter: that "bean plating" metaphor one more time
posted by erniepan at 11:18 PM on December 5, 2009

MetaFilter: For cheapness and simplicity it is far ahead of that abominable mixture Scrapple, and there is no danger of an attack of trichina after having partaken of it.
posted by The Great Big Mulp at 9:50 AM on December 6, 2009

Gimme a slab of scrapple and a bowel of Coco Wheats and you've got a good West VA breakfast.
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 10:37 AM on December 6, 2009

I have a bowel of Coco Wheats right now.
posted by [expletive deleted] at 3:22 PM on December 6, 2009

I've been curious about the history of correspondent pseudonyms since reading A Tangled Tale (a set of mathematical word problems by Lewis Carroll). Some of the responses in that were from some almost Metafilterishly colorful names, like Bradshaw of the Future, The Shetland Snark, and a joint entry by Simple Susan and Money Spinner. At one point Carrol started objecting to people signing their entries with nothing but impersonal initials, calling them "alphabetical phantoms", which prompted one correspondent to start signing their entries as Alphabetical Phantom.

I always wondered if it was just what people did at the time, or if it was specific to the culture of the Daily Packet, which it originally ran in.

I've been tempted to post an AskMe about it, but I'm pretty sure it's exactly the kind of open-ended question that doesn't belong there.
posted by Kalthare at 11:22 PM on December 6, 2009

ANTI-SCRAPPLE is pretty awesome.
posted by Halloween Jack at 8:47 AM on December 7, 2009

Gah!

toodleydoodley!!!

We have been making this for years, based on a recipe that my great grandmother used and we never had a name for it!!!

Wow!

(sorry to get so excited)

Our recipe differs from the one Wikipedia links to (different spices and no celery), but the crucial bit is the oats. We've been calling it a kind of scrapple.

For those interested: it is the bomb.
posted by crickets at 10:23 AM on December 7, 2009

I love scrapple dearly, but every time I order it at a diner, my compatriots look at me like I am a horrible monster who's death should be prayed for. It's good to know that that divisive property of the meat mash has a long and storied past.
posted by FatherDagon at 12:53 PM on December 7, 2009

Now I know what I'll be having for breakfast tomorrow. In honor of this story I just have to finish off that half-brick of scrapple that's been lurking in my fridge.
posted by scalefree at 8:50 PM on December 7, 2009

I make mine with cornmeal. I prefer the crunch of it to flour. I tried masa once; it was a bready mess, no crunch at all.
posted by scalefree at 8:53 PM on December 7, 2009