Books: Hard Scrapple

MY PHILADELPHIA FATHER (256 pp.)—Cordelia Drexel Biddle, as told to Kyle Crichfon—Doubleday ($4).

When Edward VII toured the U.S. in 1860 as Prince of Wales, something about Philadelphia especially impressed him. "In Philadelphia," he is reported to have said, "I met a large and interesting family named Scrapple, and discovered a rather delicious native food they call biddle."

In this uproarious memoir Cordelia Drexel Biddle (now Mrs. T. Markoe Robertson) serves up a Philadelphia pepper pot of stories about the Main Line's celebrated Biddies. Most of the book is about her father. Colonel Anthony J. Drexel Biddle, a punch-and-judo-throwing millionaire who led fully...