{"id":13028,"date":"2015-01-15T10:28:19","date_gmt":"2015-01-15T15:28:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/shuffly.net\/zoop\/?p=13028"},"modified":"2015-01-15T10:28:19","modified_gmt":"2015-01-15T15:28:19","slug":"a-dissertation-upon-roast-pig","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/shuffly.net\/zoop\/a-dissertation-upon-roast-pig\/","title":{"rendered":"A Dissertation upon Roast Pig"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Charles Lamb<\/a><\/p>\n

Editor’s note: An old essay, but timely once again<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

MANKIND, says a Chinese manuscript, which my friend M. was obliging enough to read and explain to me, for the first seventy thousand ages ate their meat raw, clawing or biting it from the living animal, just as they do in Abyssinia to this day. This period is not obscurely hinted at by their great Confucius in the second chapter of his Mundane Mutations, where he designates a kind of golden age by the term Cho-fang, literally the Cooks’ holiday. The manuscript goes on to say, that the art of roasting, or rather broiling (which I take to be the elder brother) was accidentally discovered in the manner following. The swine-herd, Ho-ti, having gone out into the woods one morning, as his manner was, to collect mast for his hogs, left his cottage in the care of his eldest son Bo-bo, a great lubberly boy, who being fond of playing with fire, as younkers of his age commonly are, let some sparks escape into a bundle of straw, which kindling quickly, spread the conflagration over every part of their poor mansion, till it was reduced to ashes. Together with the cottage (a sorry antediluvian make-shift of a building, you may think it), what was of much more importance, a fine litter of new-farrowed pigs, no less than nine in number, perished. China pigs have been esteemed a luxury all over the east from the remotest periods that we read of. Bo-bo was in the utmost consternation, as you may think, not so much for the sake of the tenement, which his father and he could easily build up again with a few dry branches, and the labour of an hour or two, at any time, as for the loss of the pigs. While he was thinking what he should say to his father, and wringing his hands over the smoking remnants of one of those untimely sufferers, an odour assailed his nostrils, unlike any scent which he had before experienced. What could it proceed from ? \u2014 not from the burnt cottage \u2014 he had smelt that smell before \u2014 indeed this was by no means the first accident of the kind which had occurred through the negligence of this unlucky young fire-brand. Much less did it resemble that of any known herb, weed, or flower. A premonitory moistening at the same time overflowed his nether lip. He knew not what to think. He next stooped down to feel the pig, if there were any signs of life in it. He burnt his fingers, and to cool them he applied them in his booby fashion to his mouth. Some of the crums of the scorched skin had come away with his fingers, and for the first time in his life (in the world’s life indeed, for before him no man had known it) he tasted \u2014 crackling! Again he felt and fumbled at the pig. It did not burn him so much now, still he licked his fingers from a sort of habit. The truth at length broke into his slow understanding, that it was the pig that smelt so, and the pig that tasted so delicious; and, surrendering himself up to the new-born pleasure, he fell to tearing up whole handfuls of the scorched skin with the flesh next it, and was cramming it down his throat in his beastly fashion, when his sire entered amid the smoking rafters, armed with retributory cudgel, and finding how affairs stood, began to rain blows upon the young rogue’s shoulders, as thick as hail-stones, which Bo-bo heeded not any more than if they had been flies. The tickling pleasure, which he experienced in his lower regions, had rendered him quite callous to any inconveniences he might feel in those remote quarters. His father might lay on but he could not beat him from his pig, till he had fairly made an end of it, when, becoming a little more sensible of his situation, something like the following dialogue ensued. <\/p>\n

“You graceless whelp, what have you got there devouring? Is it not enough that you have burnt me down three houses with your dog’s tricks, and be hanged to you, but you must be eating fire, and I know not what \u2014 what have you got there, I say ?” <\/p>\n

“O father, the pig, the pig, do come and taste how nice the burnt pig eats.” <\/p>\n

The ears of Ho-ti tingled with horror. He cursed his son, and he cursed himself that ever he should beget a son that should eat burnt pig. <\/p>\n

Bo-bo, whose scent was wonderfully sharpened since morning, soon raked out another pig, and fairly rending it asunder, thrust the lesser half by main force into the fists of Ho-ti, still shouting out “Eat, eat, eat the burnt pig, father, only taste \u2014 O Lord,” \u2014 with such-like barbarous ejaculations, cramming all the while as if he would choke. <\/p>\n

Ho-ti trembled every joint while he grasped the abominable thing, wavering whether he should not put his son to death for an unnatural young monster, when the crackling scorching his fingers, as it had done his son’s, and applying the same remedy to them, he in his turn tasted some of its flavour, which, make what sour mouths he would for a pretence, proved not altogether displeasing to him. In conclusion (for the manuscript here is a little tedious) both father and son fairly sat down to the mess, and never left off till they had despatched all that remained of the litter. <\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Bo-bo was strictly enjoined not to let the secret escape, for the neighbours would certainly have stoned them for a couple of abominable wretches, who could think of improving upon the good meat which God had sent them. Nevertheless, strange stories got about. It was observed that Ho-ti’s cottage was burnt down now more frequently than ever. Nothing but fires from this time forward. Some would break out in broad day, others in the night-time. As often as the sow farrowed, so sure was the house of Ho-ti to be in a blaze; and Ho-ti himself, which was the more remarkable, instead of chastising his son, seemed to grow more indulgent to him than ever. At length they were watched, the terrible mystery discovered, and father and son summoned to take their trial at Pekin, then an inconsiderable assize town. Evidence was given, the obnoxious food itself produced in court, and verdict about to be pronounced, when the foreman of the jury begged that some of the burnt pig, of which the culprits stood accused, might be handed into the box. He handled it, and they all handled it, and burning their fingers, as Bo-bo and his father had done before them, and nature prompting to each of them the same remedy, against the face of all the facts, and the clearest charge which judge had ever given, \u2014 to the surprise of the whole court, towns- folk, strangers, reporters, and all present \u2014 without leaving the box, or any manner of consultation whatever, they brought in a simultaneous verdict of Not Guilty. <\/p>\n

The judge, who was a shrewd fellow, winked at the manifest iniquity of the decision: and, when the court was dismissed, went privily, and bought up all the pigs that could be had for love or money. In a few days his Lordship’s town house was observed to be on fire. The thing took wing, and now there was nothing to be seen but fires in every direction. Fuel and pigs grew enormously dear all over the district. The insurance offices one and all shut up shop. People built slighter and slighter every day, until it was feared that the very science of architecture would in no long time be lost to the world. Thus this custom of firing houses continued, till in process of time, says my manuscript, a sage arose, like our Locke, who made a discovery, that the flesh of swine, or indeed of any other animal, might be cooked (burnt, as they called it) without the necessity of consuming a whole house to dress it. Then first began the rude form of a gridiron. Roasting by the string, or spit, came in a century or two later, I forget in whose dynasty. By such slow degrees, concludes the manuscript, do the most useful, and seemingly the most obvious arts, make their way among man-kind. <\/p>\n

Without placing too implicit faith in the account above given, it must be agreed, that if a worthy pretext for so dangerous an experiment as setting houses on fire (especially in these days) could be assigned in favour of any culinary object, that pretext and excuse might be found in ROAST PIG. <\/p>\n

Of all the delicacies in the whole mundus edibilis, I will maintain it to be the most delicate \u2014 princeps obsoniorum. <\/p>\n

I speak not of your grown porkers \u2014 things between pig and pork \u2014 those hobbydehoys \u2014 but a young and tender suckling \u2014 under a moon old \u2014 guiltless as yet of the sty \u2014 with no original speck of the amor immunditiae, the hereditary failing of the first parent, yet manifest \u2014 his voice as yet not broken, but something between a childish treble, and a grumble \u2014 the mild forerunner, or praeludium, of a grunt. <\/p>\n

He must be roasted. I am not ignorant that our ancestors ate them seethed, or boiled \u2014 but what a sacrifice of the exterior tegument! <\/p>\n

There is no flavour comparable, I will contend, to that of the crisp, tawny, well-watched, not over-roasted, crackling, as it is well called \u2014 the very teeth are invited to their share of the pleasure at this banquet in overcoming the coy, brittle resistance \u2014 with the adhesive oleaginous \u2014 O call it not fat \u2014 but an indefinable sweetness growing up to it \u2014 the tender blossoming of fat \u2014 fat cropped in the bud \u2014 taken in the shoot \u2014 in the first innocence \u2014 the cream and quintessence of the child-pig’s yet pure food \u2014 the lean, no lean, but a kind of animal manna \u2014 or, rather, fat and lean (if it must be so) so blended and running into each other, that both together make but one ambrosian result, or common substance. <\/p>\n

Behold him, while he is doing \u2014 it seemeth rather a refreshing warmth, than a scorching heat, that he is so passive to. How equably he twirleth round the string! \u2014 Now he is just done. To see the extreme sensibility of that tender age, he hath wept out his pretty eyes \u2014 radiant jellies \u2014 shooting stars – <\/p>\n

See him in the dish, his second cradle, how meek he lieth wouldst thou have had this innocent grow up to the grossness and indocility which too often accompany maturer swinehood? Ten to one he would have proved a glutton, a sloven, an obstinate, disagreeable animal \u2014 wallowing in all manner of filthy conversation \u2014 from these sins he is happily snatched away –<\/p>\n

Ere sin could blight, or sorrow fade,
\nDeath came with timely care – <\/p>\n

his memory is odoriferous \u2014 no clown curseth, while his stomach half rejecteth, the rank bacon \u2014 no coalheaver bolteth him in reeking sausages \u2014 he hath a fair sepulchre in the grateful stomach of the judicious epicure \u2014 and for such a tomb might be content to die. <\/p>\n

He is the best of Sapors. Pine-apple is great. She is indeed almost too transcendent \u2014 a delight, if not sinful, yet so like to sinning, that really a tender-conscienced person would do well to pause \u2014 too ravishing for mortal taste, she woundeth and excoriateth the lips that approach her \u2014 like lovers kisses, she biteth she is a pleasure bordering on pain from the fierceness and insanity of her relish \u2014 but she stoppeth at the palate \u2014 she meddleth not with the appetite \u2014 and the coarsest hunger might barter her consistently for a mutton chop. <\/p>\n

Pig \u2014 let me speak his praise \u2014 Is no less provocative of the appetite, than he is satisfactory to the criticalness of the palate. The strong man may batten on him, and the weakling refuseth not his mild juices. <\/p>\n

Unlike to mankind’s mixed characters, a bundle of virtues and vices, inexplicably intertwisted, and not to be unravelled without hazard, he is good throughout. No part of him is better or worse than another. He helpeth, as far as his little means extend, all around. He is the least envious of banquets. He is all neighbours’ fare. <\/p>\n

I am one of those, who freely and ungrudgingly impart a share of the good things of this life which fall to their lot (few as mine are in this kind) to a friend. I protest I take as great an interest in my friend’s pleasures, his relishes, and proper satisfactions, as in mine own. “Presents,” I often say, “endear Absents.” Hares, pheasants, partridges, snipes, barn-door chicken (those “tame villatic fowl”), capons, plovers, brawn, barrels of oysters, I dispense as freely as I receive them. I love to taste them, as it were, upon the tongue of my friend. But a stop must be put somewhere. One would not, like Lear,” give every thing.” I make my stand upon pig. Methinks it is an ingratitude to the Giver of all good flavours, to extra-domiciliate, or send out of the house, slightingly, (under pretext of friendship, or I know not what) a blessing so particularly adapted, predestined, I may say, to my individual palate \u2014 It argues an insensibility. <\/p>\n

I remember a touch of conscience in this kind at school. My good old aunt, who never parted from me at the end of a holiday without stuffing a sweet-meat, or some nice thing, into my pocket, had dismissed me one evening with a smoking plum-cake, fresh from the oven. In my way to school (it was over London bridge) a grey-headed old beggar saluted me (I have no doubt at this time of day that he was a counterfeit). I had no pence to console him with, and in the vanity of self-denial, and the very coxcombry of charity, school-boy-like, I made him a present of \u2014 the whole cake! I walked on a little, buoyed up, as one is on such occasions, with a sweet soothing of self-satisfaction; but before I had got to the end of the bridge, my better feelings returned, and I burst into tears, thinking how ungrateful I had been to my good aunt, to go and give her good gift away to a stranger, that I had never seen before, and who might be a bad man for aught I knew; and then I thought of the pleasure my aunt would be taking in thinking that I \u2014 I myself, and not another \u2014 would eat her nice cake \u2014 and what should I say to her the next time I saw her \u2014 how naughty I was to part with her pretty present \u2014 and the odour of that spicy cake came back upon my recollection, and the pleasure and the curiosity I had taken in seeing her make it, and her joy when she sent it to the oven, and how disappointed she would feel that I had never had a bit of it in my mouth at last \u2014 and I blamed my impertinent spirit of aims-giving, and out-of-place hypocrisy of goodness, and above all I wished never to see the face again of that insidious, good-for-nothing, old grey impostor. <\/p>\n

Our ancestors were nice in their method of sacrificing these tender victims. We read of pigs whipt to death with something of a shock, as we hear of any other obsolete custom. The age of discipline is gone by, or it would be curious to inquire (in a philosophical light merely) what effect this process might have towards intenerating and dulcifying a substance, naturally so mild and dulcet as the flesh of young pigs. It looks like refining a violet. Yet we should be cautious while we condemn the inhumanity, how we censure the wisdom of the practice. It might impart a gusto – <\/p>\n

I remember an hypothesis, argued upon by the young students, when I was at St. Omer’s, and maintained with much learning and pleasantry on both sides, “Whether, supposing that the flavour of a pig who obtained his death by whipping (per flagellationem extremam) superadded a pleasure upon the palate of a man more intense than any possible suffering we can conceive in the animal, is man justified in using that method of putting the animal to death ?” I forget the decision. <\/p>\n

His sauce should be considered. Decidedly, a few bread crums, done up with his liver and brains, and a dash of mild sage. But, banish, dear Mrs. Cook, I beseech you, the whole onion tribe. Barbecue your whole hogs to your palate, steep them in shalots, stuff them out with plantations of the rank and guilty garlic; you cannot poison them, or make them stronger than they are \u2014 but consider, he is a weakling \u2014 a flower.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Charles Lamb Editor’s note: An old essay, but timely once again. MANKIND, says a Chinese manuscript, which my friend M. was obliging enough to read and explain to me, for the first seventy thousand ages ate their meat raw, clawing or biting it from the living animal, just as they do in Abyssinia to … Continue reading “A Dissertation upon Roast Pig”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,13],"tags":[650],"class_list":["post-13028","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-decline-and-fall","category-humor-and-horror","tag-pigs"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4xam3-3o8","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/shuffly.net\/zoop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13028","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/shuffly.net\/zoop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/shuffly.net\/zoop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/shuffly.net\/zoop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/shuffly.net\/zoop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13028"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/shuffly.net\/zoop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13028\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13030,"href":"http:\/\/shuffly.net\/zoop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13028\/revisions\/13030"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/shuffly.net\/zoop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13028"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/shuffly.net\/zoop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13028"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/shuffly.net\/zoop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13028"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}