The Bacon Book: Irresistible, mouthwatering recipes!. Christopher Sjuve

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СКАЧАТЬ BACON IS LIFE

      THE DEVELOPMENT OF the word ‘bacon’ seems to have been something of a shared project for Europe. The word exists in English, French, German, Dutch and Norwegian. The road has been bumpy, but today we all agree that the word is bacon.

      If you entered an inn 1,000 years ago and ordered bacon and eggs, you certainly wouldn’t have been served bacon and eggs. Eggs wouldn’t have been a problem, but less certain is what they would have accompanied. Perhaps a steak?

      There seems to be general agreement among people who’ve tried to write the history of bacon that the word can be traced to Old German, where we find the word ‘bak’. This evolved into the High German ‘bakko’ (which can be spelled in numerous ways, including ‘bacho’), which can mean either belly or bacon.

      The word also appeared in the Netherlands as ‘baken’ and we know that the French were talking about bacon before the 1600s. In the German vernacular, this would eventually develop into ‘bakkon’, the equivalent of the English ‘back’ and the Norwegian ‘bak’. So far, so straightforward. Bacon must be about the back. Of a pig. Right?

      The only problem here is that bacon is not, in fact, always made using meat from the back. ‘Bak’ on a pig can mean one of two things – either the back, or the gammon. This presents us with a problem, because bacon can actually come from the belly – that is the front and the bottom.

      In England, back bacon generally refers to the thin rashers of meat carved from the loin at the back of the pig, which makes everything fairly straightforward. But in the USA and Scandinavia bacon comes from the side or belly of the animal, making ‘streaky bacon’. This doesn’t have much to do with the back. So, what’s going on?

      When the word bacon entered the English language in the 1100s (from French) it was used in more or less the same way as ‘flitch’, referring to the salted sides of pork. A few centuries later, the word bacon was generally used for salted pork. There was even a somewhat confusing period when bacon was also used to describe pork in general. This practice lasted until well into the 1800s.

      As the years have passed, everyone has thankfully come to general agreement about the meaning of ‘bacon’. That is to say, everyone in England. And everyone in the USA. Unfortunately, there’s still plenty of confusion between the two.

      It was only with the development of modern industry and the need for standardisation that two different types of bacon developed. There is, however, no doubt that the whole thing started in England.

      Etymology

      ETYMOLOGY IS THE STUDY of the origins of words. The vocabularies of modern languages come from a variety of different sources: some have evolved from older words, others have been borrowed from foreign languages and some have been named from people, developed from initialisms, or even have been deliberately invented by a certain author.

      SOURCE: WIKTIONARY.ORG

      «In 1805, 6,000 pigs were exported from Ireland. By 1813 this had increased to 14,000 and by 1821 it had reached 104,000.»

Modern

       BACON

      FOR A LONG time, people made bacon on farms, entirely separately from each other. Everyone would salt and smoke their own meat, just as they would brew their own beer, bake their own bread and make their own jam. It wasn’t until the Industrial Revolution hit England that we started to see the sort of modern, mass-produced bacon we find in shops today.

      PHOTO: THINKSTOCK.COM

      PHOTO: THINKSTOCK.COM

      In 17th-century England, pork was a lot less common than it would be a few hundred years later. It wasn’t until the arrival of the potato that pig farming really took off, when farmers began to use potatoes as feed. The numbers varied from region to region, but, in the Midlands, as many as 50–60 per cent of farmers were raising pigs and sides of meat could be seen hanging in many a cottage chimney.

      Bacon was largely a poor man’s food and it was common to keep a few sides of it in the house for emergencies. The ability to store bacon for long periods did more to keep people from stealing than any number of religious ceremonies, threats, penalties and prisons. Bacon helped to hold society together when times were tough. Only the very poorest had to live without the safety net of salted and smoked bacon (that said, it’s worth remembering that the word ‘bacon’ was defined much more broadly in pre-Industrial Revolution England than it is today and could refer to any type of salted pork).

      But the times they were a-changing, and by the dawn of the 19th century industrialisation was hammering on the doors of society. In England, at least, one firm in particular was associated with the wide-scale mass production of bacon, founded by brothers John and Henry Harris from the town of Calne.

      Picture the scene …

      ‘Hi, Henry!’ calls John to his little brother, who is busy weighing salt. It’s here, in the back room, that he makes his bacon.

      ‘I’ve run out of meat for bacon, John. Should we head out and see if we can get some more?’

      The brothers pack up their things and get ready to go out. Their bacon is becoming more and more popular, and it wouldn’t do for their customers’ demand to outstrip supply.

      PHOTO: THINKSTOCK.COM

      Henry was married to Sophia Perkins and inherited the grocery and butcher’s shop from her parents. A few years earlier, John and Henry’s father had died, leaving their mother to keep the family shop up and running for a few years before Henry took that over as well.

      Meanwhile, John had opened his own shop a little way down the high street. Both of them salted and smoked their own bacon and sold it over the counter.

      «The ice came from local water whenever it was cold enough in the English villages. When there was no local ice, they imported it from Norway.»

      Luckily, they didn’t have to go far to find their ingredients. Calne was a popular stopover for people taking their pigs to London. Many of these pigs had been transported en masse from Ireland – on any given day, as many as 1,400 pigs could pass through Customs in Bristol alone. Along the way, they met up with English pigs that were being transported.

      In 1805, 6,000 pigs were exported from Ireland. By 1813 this had increased to 14,000, and by 1821 it had reached 104,000. The figure continued to climb as the advent of steamships made the process ever more efficient. By 1837 as many as 600,000 Irish pigs were turned into food in England.

      Pigs held a special position in Ireland. Englishmen travelling to the Emerald Isle reacted with disbelief to the sight of pigs living indoors, right alongside people. And there was СКАЧАТЬ