Outside of this region, people have no idea what a pork roll is and we recently found ourselves wondering, too. A comment on an earlier post sparked an unhealthy interest in the breffast meat that needed to be investigated.

Pork roll comes to us by way of our friendly neighbors to the East, New Jersey. Originally made by John Taylor of Trenton in 1856, pork roll was originally branded Taylor’s Prepared Ham, and it is still referred to as Taylor Ham by old people who also use words like “ragamuffin” and “poppycock.” Around 1906, thanks to the Pure Food and Drug Act that passed that year, Taylor Prepared Ham could not by law be referred to as ham because, let’s face it, we all know that there is a huge difference between pork roll and ham. Taylor re-marketed the product as both “Taylor’s Pork Roll” and “Trenton Pork Roll” and eventually ditched the latter, probably figuring that the word Trenton should never be followed by pork and roll when describing food. Since then, other companies have joined the pork roll game —such Pennsy meat companies as Hatfield and Philly’s own Habbersett.

But what is it made of? This seems like one of those bits of trivia that should be but a Google search away, but the industry seems to keep a tight lip about this, only refering to the seasoning, curing and salting but nowhere do they say what part of the pork makes the roll. Attempts to contact Taylor, Habbersett and Hatfield over the phone were promptly transfered or systematically funneled towards seemingly vacant voicemail boxes. Perhaps Big Pork Roll is making an unintentional point: It’s probably better not to know than to speculate. We’ll just keep cutting those pacman-mouth slits into the sides of this savory delight and leave the questions for another day.

This begs the question: What the hell is scrapple? Coming Soon.

Aired November 23rd, 2009 on Animal Rights, Phoodies and Props Is Due.