The Mrs Beeton Blog

I was sitting down just before Easter preparing to write on locally produced food when a copy of Mrs Beeton’s book of Household Management was thrust under my nose. It had occurred to ‘Mrs Pigman’ that if she were busy helping to deliver lambs on Easter Sunday she would not be able to provide the traditional roast to visiting relatives and had asked Charlie of Bramfield Meats to let us have one of his Scotts Field Pork gammons. She was not expecting half a haunch to be delivered so was a little thrown when it arrived – every cookbook in the house was consulted including a facsimileof Mrs Beeton’s 1859 edition which as well as useful recipes contains plenty of ‘hog’ hints and information.

Food miles abandoned until next month, with thanks to Mrs B please find below some

' GENERAL OBSERVATIONS ON THE COMMON HOG   

Though the hoof in the hog is, as a general rule, cloven there are several remarkable exceptions as in the species native to Norway, Illyria, Sardinia and formerly to the Berkshire variety of the British Domesticated pig, in which the hoof is entire and uncleft.'

A new one on me – as you can see from her photo our token Berkshire pig, Lady Bev definitely has a cloven hoof. The next item shows that in 1859 the oink truely was the only part of the pig that was not used:

'Though destitute of the hide, horns and hoofs, constituting the offal of most domestic animals, the pig is not behind the other mammalia in its usefulness to man.  Its skin, especially that of the boar, from its extreme closeness of texture when tanned, is employed for the seats of saddles, to cover powder, shot, and drinking-flasks; and the hair, according to its colour, flexibility and stubbornness, is manufactured into tooth, nail and hairbrushes, - others into hat, clothes and shoe brushes; while the longer and finer qualities are made into short brooms and painters brushes…….the fat (from the carcass) is rendered …and under the name of lard it becomes an article of extensive trade and value.'

Exactly how much you can see below

'The Estimated Number of Pigs in Great Britain is supposed to exceed 20 millions; and considering the third of the number as worth £2 apiece, and the remaining two-thirds as of the relative value of 10s each, would give a marketable estimate of over £20,000,000 for this animal alone.'

This would compare to a national herd size today of 4.5 million at an estimated value of £5,000,000 – in real terms a fraction of the value 150 years ago.

And finally proving that black has always been best

'….the black pig is regarded by breeders as the best and most eligible animal, not only from the fineness and delicacy of the skin, but because it is less affected by the heat in summer, and far less subject to cuticular disease than either the white or the brindled hog, but more particularly from its kindlier nature and greater aptitude to fatten.'

What more is there to say?