How many people actually want coleslaw and a pickle served with a simple restaurant sandwich? How did this ever get started? And did it erupt at the same time as the now universal waitress refrain, “Let me get this out of you way,” intoned as she collects your plate, right before asking if you want dessert?
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Something got me started wondering what has become of the Philadelphia’s most renowned foods in recent decades. [It may be hard for some of you to envision Philly as being associated with native food, but several mainstays come to mind.]
Of course, the Philly cheesesteak has become pretty much universal across the country at this point, but I can’t understand why it took as long as it did. I grew up when hot dogs, which never interested me, were the bedrock American fare, which slowly became replaced by overcooked, flavorless hamburgers. But the cheesesteak, arising from South Philly, is a monument to simple, inspired preparation that can be served in a little over 30 seconds.
As for the others….
Over the past 10 to 15 years, Tastykake has spread wide, again taking longer than it should to push that Hostess crap off the end shelf and onto the floor.
What’s its background?
Tastykake was founded in 1913 by a couple guys who had moved moved from Pittsburg. Its headquarters were on Hunting Park Ave. in the lower Northeast sector of the city, in the area called Nicetown, if I rightly recall, so named for the Nice Ball Bearing factory there.
I was surprised to find in my search that by 1954 Tastykakes were already available in parts of 9 states. Their Butterscotch Krimpets, of course, are the king of all frosted snacks. They’re still produced in Philly, but strangely enough down at the Philadelphia Navy Yard.
Breyers Ice Cream was founded in Philadelphia in1866 by William A. Breyer – the oldest manufacturer of ice cream in the United States. The company expanded to a wholesale manufacturing plant in 1896 and was bought by the Sealtest milk company in 1926.
Our family had Sealtest milk delivered to our door in the late 1940s, and the Philly headquarters were down along the Schuylkill River near South St. Breyers and Sealtest were sharked up by the food conglomerate Unilever and Breyers been produced in Englewood Cliffs, NJ since 1993. Unilever closed the last Breyers plant in Philadelphia in 1995.
Scrapple… to be honest, while some people swear by scrapple, far more swear at it. A Pennsylvania Dutch mix of pork oddments and various cereal grains, it is formed into small bricks, each wrapped in greased paper. It’s usually served at breakfast, sliced into slabs and fried.
Growing up, I hated ketchup. Scrapple was the only nominal food item placed before me that I would slather with ketchup because the one food on earth worse that ketchup was scrapple – no wait, the real worst was, and remains, Necco Wafers, a candy produced by Lucifer to win a bet.
At any rate, the leading scrapple brand was, and I think still is, Habbersett, founded in 1863 in Middletown, Delaware County, outside Philly. It has passed through many family generations [and complaining intestines]. Since 1988, it’s been deliberately made in Bridgeville, Delaware, by Jones Dairy Farm of Wisconsin.
An old friend, Marshall Ledger, wrote a detailed Sunday-magazine article on scrapple production over 40 years ago; my kids’ 6th-grade teacher at Miquon School, Lynn Hughes, referred to scrapple as “pig miscellany.”
Lastly, I come to Philadelphia Cream Cheese, which I discovered in researching was never a product of Philadelphia at all. It was created in 1872 by William Lawrence, a dairyman from Chester, New York, as a sort of accidental milk by-product. He didn’t know what to call it, but because the Pennsylvania Dutch farmers around Philly had a reputation for creamier cheese, he decided to market it as “Philadelphia Cream Cheese” in 1880. Later it was absorbed by Kraft and is currently owned by Kraft Heinz, which is, I believe, like every other food product, an arm or perhaps toenail of Warren Buffett.
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Song of the Week
[to the tune of “I’m back in the saddle again”]
I’m ballin’ the cattle again
Ballin’ the cattle again
Yippee ti yi yay,
Not one will get away,
When I’m ballin’ the cattle again
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A couple days ago, I suddenly realized that Rump has now assumed a Kaiser role. Tasty.
lickhaven 