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A DISSERTATION
UPON
ROAST PIG
_________
Charles Lamb (Elia, London Magazine
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
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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? -- not from the burnt cottage -- he had smelt that smell before -- indeed this was by no
means the first accident of the kind which had occurred through
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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 -- 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
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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.
"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 -- what have you got there, I say?"
"O father, the pig, the pig, do come and taste how nice the burnt pig eats."
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.
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 -- O Lord," -- with such-like barbarous
ejaculations, cramming all the while as if he would choke.
Ho-ti trembled every joint while he grasped the abominable thing, wavering whether he should
not
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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.
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 in-
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considerable 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, -- to the surprise of the whole court, towns- folk, strangers,
reporters, and all present -- without leaving the box, or any manner of consultation whatever,
they brought in a simultaneous verdict of Not Guilty.
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
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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.
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.
Of all the delicacies in the whole mundus edibilis, I will maintain it to be the most delicate --
princeps obsoniorum. I speak not of your grown porkers -- things between pig and pork -- those
hobbydehoys -- but a young and tender suckling -- under a moon old -- guiltless as yet of the sty
-- with no original speck of the amor immunditiae, the hereditary failing of
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the first parent, yet manifest -- his voice as yet not broken, but something between a childish
treble, and a grumble -- the mild forerunner, or praeludium, of a grunt.
He must be roasted. I am not ignorant that our ancestors ate them seethed, or boiled -- but what
a sacrifice of the exterior tegument!
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 -- the very teeth are invited to their share of the
pleasure at this banquet in overcoming the coy, brittle resistance -- with the adhesive oleaginous
-- O call it not fat -- but an indefinable sweetness growing up to it -- the tender blossoming of fat
-- fat cropped in the bud -- taken in the shoot -- in the first innocence -- the cream and
quintessence of the child-pig's yet pure food -- the lean, no lean, but a kind of animal manna --
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.
Behold him, while he is doing -- it seemeth rather a refreshing warmth, than a scorching heat,
that he is so passive to. How equably he twirleth round
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the string! -- Now he is just done. To see the extreme sensibility of that tender age, he hath wept
out his pretty eyes -- radiant jellies -- shooting stars --
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 -- wallowing in
all manner of filthy conversation -- from these sins he is happily snatched away --
Ere sin could blight, or sorrow fade,
Death came with timely care --
his memory is odoriferous -- no clown curseth, while his stomach half rejecteth, the rank bacon
-- no coalheaver bolteth him in reeking sausages -- he hath a fair sepulchre in the grateful
stomach of the judicious epicure -- and for such a tomb might be content to die.
He is the best of Sapors. Pine-apple is great. She is indeed almost too transcendent -- a delight,
if not sinful, yet so like to sinning, that really a tender-conscienced person would do well to
pause -- too ravishing for mortal taste, she woundeth and excoriateth the lips that approach her
-- like lovers'
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kisses, she biteth-- she is a pleasure bordering on pain from the fierceness and insanity of her
relish -- but she stoppeth at the palate -- she meddleth not with the appetite -- and the coarsest
hunger might barter her consistently for a mutton chop.
Pig -- let me speak his praise -- 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.
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.
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
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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 -- It
argues an insensibility.
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 -- 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
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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 -- I myself, and not another -- would eat her
nice cake -- and what should I say to her the next time I saw her -- how naughty I was to part
with her pretty present -- 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
-- 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.
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
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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 --
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.
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 -- but consider, he is a weakling -- a flower. |
