The Bacon Book: Irresistible, mouthwatering recipes!. Christopher Sjuve
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Название: The Bacon Book: Irresistible, mouthwatering recipes!
Автор: Christopher Sjuve
Издательство: HarperCollins
Жанр: Кулинария
isbn: 9780008263539
isbn:
The Irish could get a much better price for their pigs in England. When Englishmen asked how they could let their pigs live together with them, the usual answer was, ‘Well, they pay their rent.’
Being a butcher in the little town of Calne wasn’t a bad way to make a living. The fattest pigs never stood a chance of making it all the way to London and many died along the way. According to a contemporary witness named George Bowles, ‘(t)hey just can’t cope with the stress of the journey’ and it was common to lose as many as 40–50 animals from a large herd.
John and Henry had no difficulty finding pigs to buy. A quick handshake sealed the deal and the fattest pigs, the ones that probably wouldn’t have survived the rest of the journey anyway, were easy to barter for. The trade continued to grow steadily, but everything changed for the brothers and their family in the second half of the 1840s. That was when the parasite Phytophthora infestans hit the potato crops of Ireland, devastating them. The famine that follwed left millions of people starving to death, and it was similarly catastrophic for pigs, who were largely raised on potatoes.
PHOTO: GETTY IMAGES
Once the flow of pigs stopped, the Harris family were presented with something of a problem. They decided to send John’s youngest son to America and so George Harris set off on his own adventure. For a full year, he travelled around in search of bacon, which he sent home to Calne. The adventure was at least partly successful and after a quick visit home in 1848 he again set sail across the ocean, determined to establish a bacon factory in Schenectady, New York. He lasted a year before he was forced to throw in the towel and return to the old country.
On the surface, this doesn’t sound like a success story. But George’s experiences in the USA would prove vital to the future of the Harris family business.
In the USA, George had been introduced to modern cooling techniques. In Calne the sides of bacon would typically be covered in salt for the whole summer. It was easier in winter, when the colder temperatures made it easier to make bacon without risking ruining the meat, but the huge amount of salt required for the summer bacon had clear disadvantages. In the USA, George had seen how vast quantities of ice were used during production and had the brainwave of adopting the same technique at home. The first icehouse was set up in 1856, with the ice being stored in large chambers on an iron floor above the room where the sides of bacon were kept. They found that the cold isolated the room effectively, so started to use it in the walls as well. Later, in 1864, Thomas Harris would actually patent this design of the icehouse.
PHOTO: THINKSTOCK.COM
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, where ice was rarely in short supply. All this ice allowed the Harrises to precisely adjust the salt content of their bacon, and before long they were making the best bacon around. They had a huge head start on everyone else, who rapidly started to adopt the same approach. The old form of heavily salted bacon was soon history, making way for what would eventually become known as Wiltshire bacon, a term still in use today. The Harris family were granted an extra honour when they were appointed as official suppliers of bacon to the British royal family.
By now, the Industrial Revolution was in full swing. Pigs were transported from all over England and the flow of pigs from Ireland slowly resumed as the famine-stricken country began to recover. Denmark also began to establish itself as a supplier, and when Germany started to impose tariffs, eventually banning the import of live pigs entirely, the Danes found themselves with 300,000 pigs and nobody to buy them. The animals ultimately ended up in England and thus began a long-lasting trade agreement that further bolstered the production of bacon in Wiltshire and elsewhere in England.
«The Harris family will nonetheless always hold a special place in the history of modern bacon.»
Other producers could build their own icehouses by licensing the design from the Harrises, creating a major new source of income for the family, which they used to further expand and mechanise their facilities. The rate of growth was astonishing – John and Henry’s mother would have considered it a good week if she could slaughter as many as five or six pigs and still manage to sell all the carcasses by Saturday, but by 1879 her sons’ facilities were processing more than 1,000 pigs a week.
The brothers operated two separate companies for much of the 19th century, but the bonds of family remained tight and in 1888 they consolidated into one large company. They exported bacon to most of Europe, the USA, Australia, India, China and New Zealand, even supplying the steamships that were by now regularly crisscrossing the Atlantic and Pacific oceans.
The company eventually outgrew its humble origins, through buy-outs and steady expansion, and by 1920 ownership was entirely out of the hands of the original Harris family. The Harris family will nonetheless always hold a special place in the history of modern bacon. The extent of their legacy is debatable, as for most major, ground-breaking companies, but it can be convincingly argued that their efforts played a key role in establishing bacon as an iconic product for the modern age.
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‘OK, CHRISTOPHER, YOU need to take these pigs with you.’
‘But …’
‘You aren’t listening. I’m the one paying for the voyage. And I assure you, you won’t regret it.’
Picture the scene. Christopher Columbus is preparing for his second expedition to the New World, and Queen Isabel of Spain is determined to have her way. She was, after all, a practical woman. From her perspective, his previous voyage had not been a success – after all, he had never made it to India. But the new territories could still be colonised, which soon became policy.
This was why a full flotilla of 17 ships ended up packed with 1,000 people, horses and cows. Alongside them were the first eight pigs to set trotter in the New World. Apparently, it was the Queen herself who insisted that Columbus take pigs with him across the Atlantic.
The pigs reached solid ground in November 1493. The idea was that they would multiply, making future expeditions easier by ensuring a steady supply of meat in the New World. The Spaniards had big plans for the future. We know that Columbus picked the eight pigs up on La Gomera, in the Canary Islands, before setting off and that the cargo included both wild and domesticated pigs. They had no problems surviving the voyage, which was far and away the longest any pig had ever undertaken. There were no pigs in America before Columbus – these were the first. There were other hooved animals, called peccaries, javelina, or skunk pigs, that closely resembled pigs, but with a few differences.
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