In the restaurants and hotels of France and Switzerland, no less than
in those of London, York ham is often served, and York ham at its best
is considered by epicures equal to the hams of Prague or Westphalia.
But if the English hams must share honors with the products of Germany
and Bohemia, when it comes to bacon, Britannia rules the world.
Let not that seem a trifling matter to any one. Bacon--I mean smoked
bacon--is one of the most useful and delicious of all appetizers,
alone or with other meats. It is a great tonic, too, on account of its
exceptional nutritive value. Anemic individuals should eat it every
morning; it is beneficial to consumptives whose digestive powers are
not too enfeebled; and for nursing mothers it is an ideal food. I
remember reading in a medical journal that the health of babies is
often wonderfully improved if the mother eats bacon--_good_ bacon, such
as one can get in England often and in America sometimes. The drugged,
denatured, indigestible rubbish usually sold in the United States as
"bacon," is not fit for food. The men who make it or sell it ought to
be imprisoned; some day they will be.
In view of the nutritive value of bacon and its exquisite Flavor when
properly cured, it seems strange that Continental nations have not
learned how to make it, except those which, like Denmark and Sweden,
cater for the English market. Canada also caters to this market and
Canadian bacon enjoys a much better reputation at home and abroad than
that made in the United States, with a few honorable exceptions.
In England, also, bacon was not always appraised at its true value.
Dryden, we are informed, "honestly liked the flitch of bacon better
than more delicate fare"; but he deemed it necessary to apologize for
having "a very vulgar stomach."
Doubtless, in his day, it took a robust stomach to digest bacon, and
doubtless, also, it was not so delicate and so well-flavored as it is
now. Wiltshire bacon is, like Southdown mutton, the outcome of years of
British breeding on scientific and gastronomic principles.
Professor Robert Wallace of the University of Edinburgh tells in his
"Farm Live Stock of Great Britain" what happened:
"A great change has within comparatively recent years come over
the system of feeding pigs, as well as of curing their carcases. A
generation ago it was the custom to kill pigs about two years old, at
enormous weights, after the flesh had become coarse. The method of
curing left the lean portion gorged with salt, hard, indigestible and
uninviting: then it was an advantage to have a large proportion of fat
to lean. Now, however, the system of mild-curing renders the flesh
sweet and juicy, and all efforts are directed towards the production of
as great a proportion of lean to fat as possible. The large increase
of the consumption of fresh pork has also encouraged the demand for
young lean bacon; and on the other hand the change of fashion which
has put young and tender pork on the market has helped to increase its
consumption."
Of the many English breeds the Tamworth has been found the best bacon
pig. It is one of the eldest breeds and is nearly related to the
wild boar. It benefited by the methods of improvement inaugurated by
Bakewell and his pupil, Colling; together with some other English
breeds, it has helped to modify, and in some cases has eliminated, the
kinds of pigs indigenous to European countries. The Danish curers admit
that without the importation of stock from England "their bacon would
never have taken such high rank in the world's markets."
In the United States, unfortunately, most of the breeds are lard-hogs.
"Bacon pigs," says Professor Robert Wallace, "fed on Indian corn
degenerate into lard-hogs."
Now lard is doubtless a profitable article to raise, both for home use
and for export. But in the kitchen the use of lard is an anachronism,
since it has become generally known that butter and olive oil and beef
suet are far superior to it in the yield of agreeable Flavors. Yankee
ingenuity may even succeed in producing really palatable vegetable oils
for cooking--a consummation devoutly to be wished, because it will help
along the efforts to substitute the bacon pig for the lard hog.
When Julius Sterling Morton was United States Secretary of Agriculture
he published a document which attracted much attention. It was based
mainly on a communication received from an American official in England
who advised American farmers, if they would secure a share of the
profitable Danish and Canadian trade in cured bacon of a superior
quality, to give up the various American breeds and substitute the
British Tamworths or their crosses. That was many years ago, but
American bacon is still for the most part what it should not be,
although efforts have been made to improve it.
In the "Journal of the (British) Board of Agriculture" (1909-10, pp.
99-107) there is an interesting article on Coöperative Bacon Curing,
the author of which says that the most useful breeds of pigs in the
United Kingdom for bacon are Yorkshire and Berkshire breeds. But "a
pure breed of pigs is not wanted by the bacon curer. What he wants
is a bacon pig, and this is an animal which does not belong to any
particular breed."
What is a bacon pig? The same writer answers: "A bacon pig should
mature in about seven months and should weigh about 168 pounds. This
yields the best and most profitable bacon. A bacon pig, furthermore,
must be long in body and deep in side.... This form is desirable
because it is the side of the hog that furnishes the best and most
expensive cuts, and it is necessary to have as much as possible of this
at the expense of the other parts."
Bacon curing as an organized industry is not much over half a century
old. The Wiltshire cure of bacon is, however, referred to as far back
as 1705 by Edward Lisle, in his "Observations in Husbandry." Many years
later there came a great expansion of trade in Wiltshire County which
made the name world-famed. To this day the bulk of British bacon is
cured in Wiltshire fashion in whole sides.
There are about fifty bacon factories in the United Kingdom. While
their capacity is not so great as that of the factories in the United
States, the treatment and quality of American meat are, as the writer
just cited remarks, "much below the standard aimed at in the United
Kingdom, and notwithstanding the immense supplies of bacon which reach
our country from abroad, the high price of the home product is on this
account maintained."
It must not be supposed that all the bacon offered for sale in England
is of superior quality. Sanders Spencer complained some years ago that
the Irish bacon-curers were resting on their laurels; that a very large
proportion of the pigs found in England "would be looked upon with
disgust by the Danes and Canadians and that much of the meat from our
home-bred pigs is inferior to a great deal of imported pork."
The temptation to use denaturing chemical preservatives and to smoke
insufficiently, or not at all, in order to save weight exists in
England as in America and must be combated by the consumer.
Extra choice specimens still come from some English hill farms, and the
superexcellence of this bacon is due chiefly to its being skilfully
smoked in the old-fashioned smoke house, which cures thoroughly while
avoiding the rankness that comes from too rapid curing with very strong
smoke. Properly smoked bacon is fragrant, like a flower. The other kind
isn't. The test is a very simple one: if the odor makes your mouth
water, it is all right.
Not only "hill-farmers" but thousands of others have a chance to get
rich by catering to the gastronomic demands of the time for the best
bacon, ham, and fresh young pork.
"The modern method of pig feeding has shown," as an expert informs us,
"that a combination of separated milk and cereals is by far the best
fattening material, and the future of the bacon-curing industry is
therefore, to a large extent, in the hands of dairy farmers."
Important information on this point was gathered for the benefit of
American farmers by Consul Homer M. Byington, of Bristol, and printed
in the "Daily Consular and Trade Reports" for January 4, 1912. Among
other things, he wrote that "Wiltshire cured hams and bacon command
a higher price than the hams and bacon of any other country. It is
therefore of interest to ascertain why this should be so. One of the
most prominent experts in the industry has stated that it is almost
entirely a question of feeding. The fine breed of hogs kept by the
best farmers in Wiltshire, Somerset, and Dorset are fed principally
upon skim milk and barley meal. It is claimed by the English producers
that American hogs are practically all fed on corn, which, although
a perfectly wholesome food, tends to make the hog fat, and a little
mellow, whereas feeding by the British method gives a meat beautifully
white and as solid as meat need be." Referring to a leading Wiltshire
curer, the Consul continues:
"This latter firm, although purchasing 2,000 to 3,000 hogs per week
from farmers in the surrounding territory, does not allow any breeder
under contract to give his animals refuse for food. The pigs are
subject to an ante-mortem and a post-mortem examination by a qualified
veterinary surgeon and medical officer of health. No boracic acid or
other injurious preservative is used in curing."
In Germany, where one gets not only hams of the best quality, but
excellent roast pork, many others besides farmers have taken to raising
pigs. In 1873 there were only 7,124,088 pigs in the country; in 1907
there were over 22,000,000. The number of sheep has decreased in about
the same proportion because three hogs can be raised by a peasant where
he could not graze one sheep.
Pigs are particularly profitable because they can be fed largely on
kitchen refuse and unsalable skim milk and because a pig "will produce
a pound of meat from a far less weight of food than will either sheep
or cattle."
By "mixing brains with the food," the profits can be enormously
increased. Let me ask every American and English farmer to put the
following words of England's leading authority, Sanders Spencer, into
his pipe and smoke them slowly and thoroughly:
"This selection of a compact, thick-fleshed, and pure quality sire
is of even greater importance in the pig department of the farm than
in many others, as our object is to breed a pig which is capable of
converting a large quantity of food into the largest amount of _fine
quality of meat_, and is so formed that the latter is placed on _those
portions of the pig's body which realize the largest price in the
market_."[17]
There is a funny story of a farmer who gave his pigs all they could eat
one day and starved them the next, in order to have his bacon nicely
streaked with alternate layers of fat and lean. In England they seem
to have a number of these ingenious farmers; at any rate, in Wiltshire
bacon there is always plenty of lean meat. And how delicious it tastes
when grilled, or baked in a roasting pan on a wire rack from which the
fat drips to the bottom of the pan!
When the bacon is too fat to suit the native connoisseur it is
apparently exported to America and sold at fancy prices to people who
have more money than knowledge.
Gastronomic demands suggest many opportunities to get rich,
particularly along this line. Spencer speaks of the "marvelous increase
in the proportion of the inhabitants of the British Isles who now eat
pork." Ireland exported nearly $17,500,000 worth of pork products in
1909. The slaughter houses of Denmark deal with over a million pigs
a year, largely for export to the United Kingdom, which, in 1911,
imported altogether nearly $100,000,000 worth of bacon and other pork
products.
In epicurean France pork gains rapidly on other meats and the Germans
eat nearly twice as much pork as they do beef. The figures, in pounds,
of the per capita consumption in the Empire for the first three months
of 1912 stood in this ratio: Mutton 0.33; veal, 1.54; beef, 7.87; pork,
14.55.