I poked a toothpick into a piece of nicely browned sausage that was bursting through its skin and releasing fat. Somewhere, a pig laid down its life for us, I thought, as I gratefully put the sausage in my mouth.
The pig needs to be raised, so I’m glad to read a book about its life and times.Pork: A Global History (2012) Catherine M. Rogers is part of a series called ‘Edibles’, which explores the history of the cuisine.
About 7,000 years ago people in Asia started s. was domesticatedus scrofaEurasian wild boar, she writes. “Since then, pigs have provided the most commonly eaten meat in the world. Pork is the most versatile of meats—from the rich, delicate succulence of roasted loin to the dry, salty assertiveness of ham and bacon.
In India too, meat has had its share of staunch fans. Food historian KT Acharya writes that the Kshatriya rulers were always in favor of pork. In MahabharataKing Yudhishthira fed 10,000 brahmins with pork and venison, he tells us.
to lean on
“The Romans (like the Chinese) considered pork to be the most nutritious and digestible,” says Rogers. Pliny the Elder raised a toast to the pig, stating that it “offers about fifty flavours, while all other meats have one each.” in Achilles Iliad, Rogers says, entertained his guests with the waist of a fat-laden hog. “He and Patroclus cut up the meat, and spit on them, and put salt on them, and fry them over the coals of the fire; then they serve his meat with bread and wine.”
Lord Elmsworth may disagree, but Rogers believes pigs are easier to keep – largely because they are omnivores. “They don’t require extensive land to graze like cows or sheep, but they can also forage on their own in the woods or in city streets, or keep in small enclosures and live on human leaves. They can be fed whatever is cheap – sweet potatoes, corn (in New Guinea)xia mess) in the US Midwest, coconuts in Polynesia.”
Now that pork is high on the table (the American Pork Board calls it “other white meat”), American and European breeders are producing lean pigs. She says that on average they are 16% leaner and have 27% less fat than they did two decades ago.
Uncle Sam feeds the army
I remember an Italian chef once telling me how to care for the very prized black Iberian pig in Spain. It is fed fresh acorns throughout the day, but sadly, it has to run from one end of a large field to the other for its food. This makes the pig healthier, and gives us lean meat (and a lot of enjoyment) afterwards.
There are some interesting anecdotes in the book. I learned the origins of the idiom ‘bottom of the barrel’. There was a time, in the 18th and 19th centuries, when large pieces of pork were submerged in a barrel of brine in America, “it was the standard meat for poor to middle class people and the military,” she writes. Barrel pork was classified according to the parts of the pig. “Good working class families got the better varieties, slaves the lowest grades.” And the prominence of barrel pork persists in the ‘scraping the bottom of the barrel’ idiom.
In the War of 1812, a New York packer named ‘Uncle Sam’ Wilson supplied such large quantities of pork to American soldiers that he came to recognize the entire government and was seen by cartoonists in a tall hat under a banner. He was portrayed as a giant. In which it was written ‘Uncle Sam is feeding the army.'”
I remember when the pig who played the Empress of Blandings in the BBC adaptation of Wodehouse’s Blandings Castle series died in 2013, the cast paid their tribute to her. Timothy Spall, who played Lord Elmsworth, recalls an interesting aspect of the medal-winning pig: “She was by far the most gourmet member of the cast and trust me, she had a lot of competition.” For a pig, if that’s not a compliment, then what is?
The author loves to read and write about food as much as he loves to cook and eat. well almost.
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