Goetta

A seasoned mixture of oatmeal and meat, usually pork, goetta (rhymes with “meta”) is traditional breakfast fare of southwestern Ohio and northern Kentucky. The origin of the word “goetta” is unknown. It was used at the end of the nineteenth century in Cincinnati, Ohio, and nearby Covington, Kentucky, where goetta was popularized by German immigrants, although the local Irish population supposedly also ate it. Goetta probably began as a way to extend pork scraps by frugal German workers in Cincinnati’s extensive pork-packing industry. Goetta is very similar to the Pennsylvania Dutch dish scrapple, which uses cornmeal rather than oatmeal, and is derived from the German tradition of meat puddings prepared at butchering time from meat remnants bound together with grains.