Bread crusts or stale bread is not a problem to the resourceful Amish cook. Said one, “I just turn the crust to the inside when I’m making sandwiches and it doesn’t make a difference to anyone!” But when bread passes its prime for eating as fresh slices, it is often dried to a crisp, then rolled into bread crumbs, or cubed and fashioned into Bread Filling. A watchful cook can make this successfully on top of the stove. In fact, as one experienced Amish woman explained, “You don’t even need gravy with it if you have it real moist.” The dish is less likely to scorch, however, if it is baked in the oven.

Twenty-pound slabs of fresh beef were regularly dried at butchering time. The dry salt curing, followed by smoking, and finally, the meat’s hanging undisturbed for six weeks, resulted in a pungently strong beef for sandwiches and dried beef gravy. Traditionally the meat was chipped off the chunk in thin slices.

Those German immigrants who settled in eastern Pennsylvania did not invent sausage. They developed their taste for the robust meat in Germany, but found it translated well to the New World where they could still grow hogs and do their own butchering. Sausage was, and is, eaten both smoked and fresh. The fresh variety was either cooked and canned for future use or buried under fat in crocks kept in the cool cellar for more immediate use. Smoked sausage, after being smoked, hung in the attic, offering its spicy flavor throughout the winter. Both varieties were commonly prepared by browning the pieces and serving them with potatoes.

Butchering yielded rich meat scraps, too flavorful to give to the animals or simply throw away. Scrapple, however, was not invented in Pennsylvania. It most likely came with settlers from the lower Rhine area of Germany to Philadelphia. So it was in this country that the Amish learned to make the dish. Two ingredients distinguish the dish—buckwheat and cornmeal (a New World addition), which act as extenders and provide a distinctive flavor.

When canning was perfected in the late 19th century, many Amish cooks found that process to be the solution to having meat with a fresh— rather than smoked—flavor, year round. Until then, fresh meat was stored either under fat in the cellar or in the cool springhouse. Recalls one woman, “We had a big water trough in our pantry that was spring-fed. It was as long as a bathtub and we used that to cool food.” Canning took away the pressure to use meat quickly before it spoiled. It provided the cook, too, with the prospect of a nearly instant meal, should drop-in company appear or other duties keep her preoccupied. Many Amish cooks still can meat since they are able to store it at home, in the absence of home freezers. As important as preparing flavorful and tender meat is creating a good gravy. The cook, whether using fresh or canned meat, intends to have a rich broth to work with when the meat is finished cooking.

The mention of it brings fond smiles to the faces of those over 50 years of age. “My favorite is Cold Soup,” an elderly man explained without hesitation. “From strawberry time to the end of peach season you can eat it. Tear up bread—homemade or bought—and put fresh fruit over it with milk. “We’d have a big meal at noon, then this was a cool treat about 4 o’clock in the afternoon. When we were in the harvest it was a good thing for the men who were more tired than hungry.” The soup was primarily a hot-weather dish, although one grandmother remembers Cold Banana Soup which could be eaten whenever the fruit man came by. By using bread instead of a shortcake, the cook was saved extra baking. The combination may have evolved also as a way to redeem the drier, homemade bread common at the turn of the century. Sometimes Cold Soup was the main meal of the day. Cooked or fried potatoes were frequently served with it to make the meal more substantial. The cook supplied the ingredients. The persons at the table made their own mixes.

Oyster stew brought a special variety to the soup menu in many Amish homes. Those persons who didn’t savor the oysters usually claimed to enjoy the flavorful broth! And it’s a tradition to add body to the stew’s thin milk base by stirring a handful or more of crushed crackers into each bowl.