Soul food isn’t just southern. My grandmother, who will be 93 this year, was born in Pennsylvania. When she craves soul food, it’s not necessarily the regional dishes common in the South where she lives today. One of her favorite foods from childhood, ponhaus or scrapple, is associated with the culture of the Pennsylvania Dutch.

Scrapple is a kind of pork mush made of meat scraps and cornmeal, mixed with seasonings and formed into a solid loaf or roll. Like Italian polenta it is often served sliced and fried, sometimes as a breakfast dish with maple syrup, corn syrup, or apple butter. Until I learned that it was probably created by thrifty American colonists of German and/or Dutch ancestry, I had assumed that scrapple was African-American soul food, especially because my mother always associated this breakfast treat with a jazz tune composed by Charlie Parker, “Scrapple from the Apple.”