Post by BBQ Butcher on Jan 10, 2015 15:07:26 GMT -5
Bacon
Ancient Romans gave us ham. Anglo-Saxons gave us bacon. It is the food of kings and common folk. Tasty, versatile, economical and ubiquitous. Brown N' Serve (precooked) bacon was introduced to the American public in the 1960s. USA consumption plummeted in when cholesterol was "discovered" and nitrates caused a stir. Turkey bacon surfaced in the 1990s. People today are redisovering the joys of bacon. In moderation. Bacon pairs perfectly with sweet (chocolate, cookies, ice cream)and to savory (potato chips, salad dressings, Bloody Marys). The possibilities are infinite!
What is bacon?
"Bacon. The side of a pig cured with salt in a single piece. The word originally meant pork of any type, fresh or cured, but this older usage had died out by the 17th century. Bacon, in the modern sense, is peculiarly a product fo the British Isles, or is produced abroad to British methods...Preserved pork, including sides salted to make bacon, held a place of primary importance in the British diet in past centuries....British pigs for both fresh and salted meat had been much improved in the 18th century. The first large-scale bacon curing business was set up in the 1770s by John Harris in Wiltshire...Wiltshire remains the main bacon-producing area of Britain..."
---Oxford Companion to Food, Alan Davidson [Oxford University Press:Oxford] 1999 (p. 47)
Why call it "bacon?"
"Bacon. Etyomologically, bacon means meat from the 'back of an animal'. The word appears to come from a prehistoric Germanic base *bak-, which was also the source of English back. Germanic bakkon passed into Frankish bako, whcih French borrowed as bacon. English acquired the word in the twelfth century, and seems at first to have used it as a synonym for the native term flitch, 'side of cured pig meat'. By the fourteenth century, however, we find it being applied to the cured meat itself..."
---An A-Z of Food and Drink, John Ayto [Oxford University Press:Oxford] 2002 (p. 14-5)
British bacon
"Hams and bacon were either dry-salted or barrelled in their own brine. The Romans recognized ham (perna) and shoulder bacon (petaso) as two separate meats, and different recipes for preparing them for the table. According to Apicius both were to be first boiled with dried figs, but ham could then be baked in a flour with paste, while bacon was to be browned and served with a wine and pepper sauce...Bacon fat or lard was in particular favour among the Anglo-Saxons who used it for cooking and also as a dressing for vegetables...[Medieval] Country folk ate their bacon with pease or bean pottage or with 'joutes'."
---Food and Drink in Britain: From the Stone Age to the 19th Century, C. Anne Wilson [Academy Chicago:Chicago] 1991 (p. 74, 77 & 88)
"...the most important products from the pig were bacon and ham. Once the pig was ready to be butchered, the tueur skillfully cut the larger joints to be put aside for salting, or more commmonly in France, drying into hams and sides of "lard" (bacon). Bacon was the cheapest, most popular pork product, and a mainstay of the European peasant diet for centuries. William Ellis, one of many sixteenth and seventeeth-century English rural gentlemen who produced books on agricultural and domestic improvements, wrote in 1750 that "Where there is Bread and Bacon enough, there is no Want....In the Northern Parts of England, thousands of families eat little other Meat than Bacon; and indeed, in the southern parts, more than ever live on Bacon, or Pickled Pork." Some flitches of bacon were salted and then plain dried while the best bacon was hung in the chimney breast to smoke. Sliced bacon collops were a special English cut of bacon that was fried with eggs, the forerunner of our "greasy breakfasts" of bacon and eggs. In the past, as we have seen, most home-cured bacon was cooked into a pease or bean pottage. Commercial bacon production was started as early as 1770, when it is said that John Harris of Clane in Wiltshire, watching pigs resting there on their way from Ireland to London, had the idea of curing them on the spot. Special huge, fat bacon pigs, were bred to be killed at any time of year. The meat was cured quickly, and meant that it tainted quickly as well. As the quality was not so good, this bacon was sold quickly and cheaply to the poor in country markets. In spite of this, William Ellis considered bacon to be a "seviceable, palatable, profitable, and clean meat, for ready Use in a Country house;..." Bacon could also be spiced. A recipe from 1864, in The Art and Mystery of Curing, Preserving, and Potting all kinds of Meats, Game and Fish by a Wholesale Curer of Comestibles, for "superior spiced bacon," suggested taking some pieces of pork "suitable for your salting tub," rubbing them well with warmed treacle, and adding salt, saltpeter, ground allspice, and pepper, rubbing and turning them every day for a week. The meat was then suspended in a current of air and later coated with bran or pollard and smoked."
---Pickled, Potted and Canned: How the Art and Science of Food Preserving Changed the World, Sue Shephard [Simon and Schuster:New York] 2000 (p. 68-9)
Brown 'N Serve
"Many of us are short of time at home or short of patience in camp when breakfast has to be cooked. Armour and Company offers to help out with a new product, a bacon called Brown 'N'Serve that is partially pre-cooked so it needs only a short turn on the stove. Armour say that Brown 'N Serve not only can be prepared much faster than regular bacon but also curls less, shrinks less, and leaves less waste fat in your frying pan. CU had refrigerated samples of Brown N'Serve flown in from Omaha, Nebr., one of the cities in which it was being test marketed. Each package held 18 to 20 slices of bacpon, generally about 7 1/2 inches long and weighing 5 ounces. The price of a package was 89 cents, which figures out to a whopping $2.85 a pound. CU's panelists prepared the samples, along with samples of some major brands of regular bacons, by three common methods of cooking bacon; frying on top of a gas stove, frying in an electric skillet, and broiling in an oven. Each panelist cooked the bacon to his own taste. Each portion of bacon was weighed and measured before and after cooking, and a record was kept of the time that elapsed between putting the bacon on the fire and taking it off. For the Brown 'N Serve, the average loss in weight for each of the three methods of preparation was about 45%. Shrinkage was similar for all methods: the slices lost about 25% of their length in the preparation. Armour's claim that Brown 'N Serve could be prepared in three minutes in a frypan was substantiated, and the time was even less--about two minutes--for oven broiling. In contrast, the regular bacons showed weight losses of approximately 70%, shrinkage in length of about 30%, and cooking times of 10 to 12 minutes for frypan preparation and 4 to 6 minutes for oven broiling. If, then, the saving of minutes is an important consideration, it can be achieved to a significant degree whitgh regular bacon by oven broiling, and only about half the panelests felt that using Brown 'N Serve was high-quality bacon, most of them judging that it was better than the bacon they ordinarily bought for themselves. One thing that certainly diminishes the appeal of Brown 'N Serve is its price. At $2.85 a pound, it would be equivalent, after adjusting for yield differences, to a pound or regular bacon at about $1.50 to $1.60. Mosty of the panelists said they would be reluctant to pay such prices for this or any other bacon."
---"Quick Cook Bacon," Consumer Reports, May 1963 (p. 215)
Ancient Romans gave us ham. Anglo-Saxons gave us bacon. It is the food of kings and common folk. Tasty, versatile, economical and ubiquitous. Brown N' Serve (precooked) bacon was introduced to the American public in the 1960s. USA consumption plummeted in when cholesterol was "discovered" and nitrates caused a stir. Turkey bacon surfaced in the 1990s. People today are redisovering the joys of bacon. In moderation. Bacon pairs perfectly with sweet (chocolate, cookies, ice cream)and to savory (potato chips, salad dressings, Bloody Marys). The possibilities are infinite!
What is bacon?
"Bacon. The side of a pig cured with salt in a single piece. The word originally meant pork of any type, fresh or cured, but this older usage had died out by the 17th century. Bacon, in the modern sense, is peculiarly a product fo the British Isles, or is produced abroad to British methods...Preserved pork, including sides salted to make bacon, held a place of primary importance in the British diet in past centuries....British pigs for both fresh and salted meat had been much improved in the 18th century. The first large-scale bacon curing business was set up in the 1770s by John Harris in Wiltshire...Wiltshire remains the main bacon-producing area of Britain..."
---Oxford Companion to Food, Alan Davidson [Oxford University Press:Oxford] 1999 (p. 47)
Why call it "bacon?"
"Bacon. Etyomologically, bacon means meat from the 'back of an animal'. The word appears to come from a prehistoric Germanic base *bak-, which was also the source of English back. Germanic bakkon passed into Frankish bako, whcih French borrowed as bacon. English acquired the word in the twelfth century, and seems at first to have used it as a synonym for the native term flitch, 'side of cured pig meat'. By the fourteenth century, however, we find it being applied to the cured meat itself..."
---An A-Z of Food and Drink, John Ayto [Oxford University Press:Oxford] 2002 (p. 14-5)
British bacon
"Hams and bacon were either dry-salted or barrelled in their own brine. The Romans recognized ham (perna) and shoulder bacon (petaso) as two separate meats, and different recipes for preparing them for the table. According to Apicius both were to be first boiled with dried figs, but ham could then be baked in a flour with paste, while bacon was to be browned and served with a wine and pepper sauce...Bacon fat or lard was in particular favour among the Anglo-Saxons who used it for cooking and also as a dressing for vegetables...[Medieval] Country folk ate their bacon with pease or bean pottage or with 'joutes'."
---Food and Drink in Britain: From the Stone Age to the 19th Century, C. Anne Wilson [Academy Chicago:Chicago] 1991 (p. 74, 77 & 88)
"...the most important products from the pig were bacon and ham. Once the pig was ready to be butchered, the tueur skillfully cut the larger joints to be put aside for salting, or more commmonly in France, drying into hams and sides of "lard" (bacon). Bacon was the cheapest, most popular pork product, and a mainstay of the European peasant diet for centuries. William Ellis, one of many sixteenth and seventeeth-century English rural gentlemen who produced books on agricultural and domestic improvements, wrote in 1750 that "Where there is Bread and Bacon enough, there is no Want....In the Northern Parts of England, thousands of families eat little other Meat than Bacon; and indeed, in the southern parts, more than ever live on Bacon, or Pickled Pork." Some flitches of bacon were salted and then plain dried while the best bacon was hung in the chimney breast to smoke. Sliced bacon collops were a special English cut of bacon that was fried with eggs, the forerunner of our "greasy breakfasts" of bacon and eggs. In the past, as we have seen, most home-cured bacon was cooked into a pease or bean pottage. Commercial bacon production was started as early as 1770, when it is said that John Harris of Clane in Wiltshire, watching pigs resting there on their way from Ireland to London, had the idea of curing them on the spot. Special huge, fat bacon pigs, were bred to be killed at any time of year. The meat was cured quickly, and meant that it tainted quickly as well. As the quality was not so good, this bacon was sold quickly and cheaply to the poor in country markets. In spite of this, William Ellis considered bacon to be a "seviceable, palatable, profitable, and clean meat, for ready Use in a Country house;..." Bacon could also be spiced. A recipe from 1864, in The Art and Mystery of Curing, Preserving, and Potting all kinds of Meats, Game and Fish by a Wholesale Curer of Comestibles, for "superior spiced bacon," suggested taking some pieces of pork "suitable for your salting tub," rubbing them well with warmed treacle, and adding salt, saltpeter, ground allspice, and pepper, rubbing and turning them every day for a week. The meat was then suspended in a current of air and later coated with bran or pollard and smoked."
---Pickled, Potted and Canned: How the Art and Science of Food Preserving Changed the World, Sue Shephard [Simon and Schuster:New York] 2000 (p. 68-9)
Brown 'N Serve
"Many of us are short of time at home or short of patience in camp when breakfast has to be cooked. Armour and Company offers to help out with a new product, a bacon called Brown 'N'Serve that is partially pre-cooked so it needs only a short turn on the stove. Armour say that Brown 'N Serve not only can be prepared much faster than regular bacon but also curls less, shrinks less, and leaves less waste fat in your frying pan. CU had refrigerated samples of Brown N'Serve flown in from Omaha, Nebr., one of the cities in which it was being test marketed. Each package held 18 to 20 slices of bacpon, generally about 7 1/2 inches long and weighing 5 ounces. The price of a package was 89 cents, which figures out to a whopping $2.85 a pound. CU's panelists prepared the samples, along with samples of some major brands of regular bacons, by three common methods of cooking bacon; frying on top of a gas stove, frying in an electric skillet, and broiling in an oven. Each panelist cooked the bacon to his own taste. Each portion of bacon was weighed and measured before and after cooking, and a record was kept of the time that elapsed between putting the bacon on the fire and taking it off. For the Brown 'N Serve, the average loss in weight for each of the three methods of preparation was about 45%. Shrinkage was similar for all methods: the slices lost about 25% of their length in the preparation. Armour's claim that Brown 'N Serve could be prepared in three minutes in a frypan was substantiated, and the time was even less--about two minutes--for oven broiling. In contrast, the regular bacons showed weight losses of approximately 70%, shrinkage in length of about 30%, and cooking times of 10 to 12 minutes for frypan preparation and 4 to 6 minutes for oven broiling. If, then, the saving of minutes is an important consideration, it can be achieved to a significant degree whitgh regular bacon by oven broiling, and only about half the panelests felt that using Brown 'N Serve was high-quality bacon, most of them judging that it was better than the bacon they ordinarily bought for themselves. One thing that certainly diminishes the appeal of Brown 'N Serve is its price. At $2.85 a pound, it would be equivalent, after adjusting for yield differences, to a pound or regular bacon at about $1.50 to $1.60. Mosty of the panelists said they would be reluctant to pay such prices for this or any other bacon."
---"Quick Cook Bacon," Consumer Reports, May 1963 (p. 215)