bacon-msg - 2/16/08
Medieval bacon.
NOTE: See also the files: pork-msg, ham-msg, cooking-oils-msg, butter-msg, larding-msg.
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Date: Tue, 5 Oct 2004 11:12:19 -0400
From: "Phil Troy / G. Tacitus Adamantius"
<adamantius.magister at verizon.net>
Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] Real bacon
To: Cooks within the SCA <sca-cooks at ansteorra.org>
Also sprach Sharon Gordon:
> Would people who have experience with real bacon (as different from the
> typical American breakfast slices or UK rashers of bacon) describe how it
> looks and tastes? Also how does it differ in cooking? If you wanted a
> butcher to give you some, how would you ask for it?
We may need to answer this in stages, with people throwing out sort
of feeler questions at various times to find out what you really want
to know, because I'm not sure what you mean by "real" in this case.
Originally, in English, bacon was virtually any cured hogmeat other
than ham. Today, what you see most often is streaky or belly bacon,
or back bacon, which comes from the loin of the hog. Then there's a
sort of grey area of cuts treated like ham but actually more like
bacon: things like Bath Chaps (essentially a hammish sort of thing
made from the boned-out jowl), etc.
The primary difference between the typical packaged, pre-sliced
American belly bacon and what I suspect you mean when you say its
"real" equivalent, is that the stuff in clear plastic packets with
the little window to show you the one viable streak of muscle meat in
it, is that water is added. This affects not only the weight, but
also the texture and its behavior in cooking. I'd suspect that the
really industrial/commercial stuff has more sugar in the cure, which,
when combined with the added water, leads to a greater amount of
sticky, burny juices in the bottom of your pan, the kind of thing
that can make it tough to fry eggs in the same pan ;-).
I would further say, speaking in my official capacity as Arbiter of
all things, that realness is not a function of the cut; you can get
good, slab bacon of the American sort (it may or may not have a rind
on it, and you may or may not choose to remove it, either before or
after slicing) at places like butcher shops, smokehouses, farmers'
markets, etc. It's called "slab bacon". Back bacon, the stuff made
from the loin, is sometimes known as English or Irish bacon,
especially when pre-sliced and packaged, but when whole, is often
called boiling bacon, because a common way to eat it is boiled with
cabbage or other greens (corned beef and cabbage is actually, I
understand, the American poor substitute).
Some butchers will also sell what they call cured or smoked pork
loin, which you can buy in a hunk by the pound, or have the butcher
slice to use as rashers.
Canadian Bacon, by the way, is supposed to be identical to back
bacon, until someone decided to cut off the best part of it and use
it for something else, leaving behind a nearly-fat-free eye of the
loin. In Canada, though, I believe this heresy is not practiced; it's
just "bacon", and functionally identical to belly or back bacon. I
guess it's like English Muffins in England: they do have them, but
don't bother calling them English. Duh! ;-)
Adamantius
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