Part 8

‘There is an old adage, ‘Give a dog a bad name, and his ruin is accomplished.’ Such may be true of the canine race; but the noble family of animals of which I am treating, furnishes a striking illustration that the proverb applies not to their numbers. A goose, it is said, saved lordly Rome by its cackling; and had not their list of Divinities just then been full, a grateful people would have found for him a sedgy pool and quiet nest in Olympus. How did the ancestors of that same people repay the pig for a service scarcely less important?

‘The veriest smatterer in the classics knows, that, when from flaming Troy ‘Æneas the great Anchises bore,’ seeking in strange lands a new home for his conquered people, a white sow, attended by thirty white little pigs, pure as herself, pointed out to him the scene of his future empire. But what did he and his people do for the pig in return? Did they load him with honours? Did they cherish him with corn? Did they treat him with respect? No! with black ingratitude, which still merits the indignation of every admirer of the pig, they affixed to the animal the appellation of _Porcus_; and ‘poor cuss’ the pig would have been to the present day, had not the Latin tongue long since ceased to be the language of the world. But, ‘poor cuss’ he is no longer, when in Worcester county he spurns his classic name, and, adopting the vernacular, he ‘grows the whole hog,’ that he may ‘pork us,’ in return for the care which we bestow upon him.

‘For the sake of our farmers, who are anxious to make a profit from pig-raising, it is greatly to be regretted that the thirty-at-a-litter breed has disappeared from the face of the earth. Breeding swine with such a rate of increase must be almost as profitable as ‘shaving’ notes at two per cent. per month; but still the impression is irresistibly forced upon us, that, in a family so numerous, those who came last to dinner, at least in their infant days, would not have gained flesh very rapidly. Indeed, in such a family it would seem almost impossible to dispense with the services of a wet nurse, in order to bring up profitably the rising generation.

‘The course of the pig, like that of the Star of Empire, has ever tended westward. From China we trace him to Italy, the gloomy mountains of the Hartz, the broad plains of Westphalia, the fertile valleys of France, and to the waving forests of ‘Merrie England;’ all have known him since the days when their bold barons and hungry retainers sat down to feast on the juicy chine of the wild boar, and the savoury haunch of venison. In green Erin, piggy has been an important member of society; true, he has shared his master’s meal, and basked in the comfortable warmth of his cabin; but, like a ‘gintleman’ as he is, he has ever paid the ‘rint;’ and St. Patrick, in the plenitude of his power and influence, never saw the day he could have banished him from that ‘gem of the ocean.’

‘When the pig first crossed to this western world remains in doubt. Whether he came with the Pilgrims, pressing with the foot of a pioneer the Blarney-stone of New England, and scanning with fearless eye the cheerless prospect before him, or whether, regardless of liberty of conscience, and careful only of his own comfort, he waited till the first trials and toils of a new settlement had been met and overcome, we have no record; enough for us that he is here; how or where he came concerns us not. He is among us and of us. From souse to sausage we have loved him; from ham to harslet we have honoured him; from chine to chops we have cherished him. The care we have shown him has been repaid a hundred-fold. He has loaded our tables, and lighted our fire-sides, and smiling plenty has followed in his steps, where hungry famine would have stalked in his absence.

‘But still further towards the setting sun has been the arena of the pig’s greatest triumphs; there have been the fields of his widest influence. Beneath the vast forests of Ohio, raining to the ground their yearly harvests of mast--through her broad corn-fields, stretching as far as the eye can see, he has roamed, and fed, and fattened. From him, and the commercial interests he has mainly contributed to establish, has grown a mighty State, scarcely second to any in this confederacy; from his ashes has arisen a new order in society--the ‘Bristleocracy of the great West.’

‘A broad levee bustling with business, lofty and spacious stores and slaughter-houses, crowded pens, and a river bearing on its bosom steamboats in fleets--all attest the interest which the pig has exerted on the agricultural and commercial interests of the great State of Ohio. He has filled the coffers of her bankers, and has bought the silks which cover her belles. He has built the beautiful palaces which adorn the ‘Queen City of the West,’ and feeds the princely luxury of those who inhabit them. _There_ he is almost an object of worship, and his position is considered as about equivalent to a patent of nobility. Fancy dimly paints the picture, when a few years hence, the wealthy pork merchant, who justly boasts his numerous _quarterings_, shall, in the true spirit of heraldry, paint on the pannel of his carriage, and on the escutcheon over his door-way, a lustrous shield, bearing in brilliant colours a single pig, his bristles all _rampant_, his tail closely _curlant_, and his mouth widely _opant_, till the lions, the griffins, and the unicorns of the Old World shall fade into insignificance before the heraldic devices of the New.’[7]

‘Your Spanish pig, who, by the way, is a no less important character in his country than is his cousin in Ireland, is not raised for the vulgar purpose of being fried to lard, or salted down to pork. He has, in fact, no more fat than he has hair on him. He is a long-legged, long-snouted, and long-tailed fellow, and would have been described by Plato as an animal without hairs. But though the pickings on his ribs be small, they are sweet. The Spaniard rolls the morsels under his tongue as he does his easily-besetting sins. It is nut-fed flesh; and has the flavour of acorns. This taste is as much prized in the roasted joint as that of the skin in the sherry. Pig is game in Spain. The porker does not live there in the chimney corner, and sit in the best arm-chair, as in Paddy’s cabin; but he roams the fields, and goes a-nutting with the boys and girls. He eats grass, as there are no cows to eat it; and would milk the goats, doubtless, if they would let him. He evidently knows more than the same animal in other countries; and is, in consequence, more willing to be driven. He will squeal when he feels the knife, but for no other reason. Nor is his squeal the same as that heard at the North. There are more vowel sounds in it. It is also less through the nose than in New England; and has some gutturals even farther down the throat than those of a Dutchman. Your wild boar is a monster compared with him. The flesh of the latter is to that of the former as the crisp brown of roast pig is to the tanned hide in your riding saddle. Accordingly, to refuse pork at a Spanish table is to pronounce yourself ‘of the circumcision;’ and should you decline a cut of a particularly nice ham, you would be set down as no better than a heathen. However, you never would do it--particularly after having read this essay. I assure you that when you may have eaten up all the chickens which were stowed away in your saddle bags, you cannot do better than to attack your landlord’s roast pig--provided you can get it. Only it may cost you dear in the reckoning, as it is thought a dish to set before the king. You may like pork, or you may not; but one thing is certain, it is the only meat in the Peninsula which has juices in it. Mutton may have a very little; and should you travel far in the country, you would see the day when you would be glad of a leg of it. But the beef is dry as ‘whittlings.’ An entire joint of roast beef would kill a man as effectually as a joist of timber. Whoever should undertake to live on Spanish beef a twelvemonth, would become at the end of that time what he was, in fact, at the beginning--wooden-headed. Make up your mind, therefore, to eat the meat of the uncircumcised, if you have any thought of going to Spain. You will often have to take your choice between that and nothing; and my word for it, ’tis much preferable. For the land is leaner far than pork; and happy is that traveller, who, when he is reduced to pickings, can find a spare-rib to work upon. Forewarned--forearmed.[8]’

Pork is the great food of the Brazilian people. It is prepared and eaten, according to Dr. Walshe, in a peculiar manner. When the pig is killed, the butcher dexterously scoops out the bones and muscular flesh, leaving behind only the covering of fat. In this state it is salted, folded up, and sent in great quantities to Rio, where it is called _toucinho_. All the stores and _vendas_ are full of it, and it is used commonly for culinary purposes, and forms an ingredient in every Brazilian article of cookery.

The flesh of the peccary (after cutting away the fetid orifice on its back) and of the wild or musk hog, both known under the Indian appellation of quanco in Trinidad, is much preferable to that of the domestic swine.

The flesh of the rhinoceros is eaten in Abyssinia, and by some of the Dutch settlers in the Cape Colony, and is in high esteem. The flesh of the hippopotamus used also to be eaten on the east coast of Africa, roasted or boiled, and fetched a high price as a delicacy. The fat was used in making puddings, instead of butter. The Portuguese settlers were permitted by the priests to eat the flesh of this animal in Lent, passing it off as _fish_ from its amphibious habits, and hence their consciences were at ease.

The flesh of the tapir, when roasted, closely resembles beef, especially if it be young; and that of the water hare is also considered excellent food, being white and delicate, and much of the same flavour as that of the tapir.

HORSE-FLESH.

At Paris, where all eccentricities are found, and even encouraged, one of the latest gastronomic innovations is the use of horse-flesh. The French are always adding to their dietetic regimen by introducing new articles of food. This social phenomenon of making the horse contribute to the nourishment of the human race, is not altogether new. The ancient Germans and Scandinavians had a marked liking for horse-flesh. The nomade tribes of Northern Asia make horse-flesh their favorite food. It has long been authorized and publicly sold in Copenhagen.

With the high ruling prices of butcher’s meat, what think you, gentlemen and housekeepers, of horse-flesh as a substitute for beef and mutton? Are you innocently ignorant of the French treatise of that eminent naturalist and professor of zoology, M. St. Hilaire, upon horse for food? Banquets of horse-flesh are at present the rage in Paris, Toulouse, and Berlin. The veterinary schools there pronounce horse-bone soup preferable beyond measure to the old-fashioned beef-bone liquid, and much more economical.

Horse-flesh steak without sauce, and cold, is cited as a morsel superior to the finest game that flies! and cut, too, from a horse nearly a quarter of a century old; one of the labouring cavalry kind who pranced at the sound of the trumpet, and snuffed the battle from afar off, little dreaming he was doomed to steaks, soup, and washing-day hashes. Horse-flesh pie, too, eaten cold, is a dainty now at Berlin and Toulouse, and boiled horse, _rechauffé_, has usurped the place of ragouts and secondary dishes! What a theme, hippophology, to write upon. We shall soon hear in our city dining rooms, ‘A piece o’ horse, my kingdom for a piece of horse!’ ‘Waiter! a cut from the fore-shoulder, well done.’ ‘A horse sandwich and ale, and the morning paper.’ Our witty friend _Punch_ had its horse-laugh recently upon the subject of the sensation this movement has created in equestrian circles.

A Frenchman, observes a recent writer, was one day remonstrating against the contempt expressed by Englishmen for French beef, the inferiority of which he would not admit. ‘I have been two times in England,’ said he, ‘but I nevere find the beef so supérieur to ours. I find it vary convenient that they bring it you on leetle pieces of stick for one penny, but I do not find the beef supérieur.’ ‘Good gracious!’ exclaimed the Englishman, ‘you have been eating cats’ meat for beef.’ What this Frenchman did in the innocence of his heart, his countrymen now do, it seems, with _malice prepense_.

And a Frenchman of considerable reputation, in a letter on alimentary substances, and especially upon the flesh of the horse, calls upon the whole world to put aside, what he considers, an ancient and absurd prejudice, and to realize at home that famous sentence in the geography we used to read at school, which, under the head of Norway, informed us ‘horse-flesh is publicly sold in the markets.’

‘M. Isidore St. Hilaire is very serious. He does not merely advocate the fillet of horse-flesh--the mare soup and fricasseed colt--in sarcastic allusion to the practice of Parisian restaurants. He comes gravely forward, with chapters of scientific evidence and argument, to contend that, while animal food is absolutely necessary to the proper nourishment of the human race, millions of Frenchmen eat no animal food, and every year millions of pounds of excellent meat are wasted. He knows how the cause he advocates lends itself to ridicule--he knows how difficult it has always been to get rid of a prejudice--he knows the fate of innovators; but, though a Frenchman, he braves ridicule, brings a heavy battery of facts to destroy what he deems a prejudice, and is already experiencing some of the triumph which follows a hard-won victory. For seven years he has been advocating the desirableness of eating horse-flesh--for seven or eight years he has been collecting evidence and gaining converts--and now he feels strong enough to appeal to the European public in a small volume.[9]

‘Since then, Germany has had its ‘Banquets of Horse-flesh’ for the wits to ridicule--public feastings at which ‘cats’ meat’ was served in various forms, as soup, as bouilli, as fillet, as cutlet; and all the feasters left the table converted hippophagists. In 1841, horse-flesh was adopted at Ochsenhausen and Wurtemburg, where it is now publicly sold under the surveillance of the police. Every week five or six horses are brought to market. At the Lake of Constance, a large quantity of this meat is also sold. In 1842, a banquet of 150 persons inaugurated its public use at Königsbaden, near Stuttgard. In 1846, the police of Baden authorized its public sale, and Schaffhausen followed in the same year. In 1847, at Detmold and at Weimar, public horse-flesh banquets were held with great _éclat_--in Karlsbad (Bohemia) and its environs, the new beef came into general use--and at Zittau, 200 horses are eaten annually. At Ling, after one of these banquets, the police permitted the sale of horse-flesh, which is now general in Austria, Bohemia, Saxony, Hanover, Switzerland, and Belgium. The innovation made rapid converts. In 1853, Berlin had no less than five _abattoirs_, where 150 horses were killed and sold. At Vienna, in 1853, there was a riot to prevent one of these banquets; but in 1854, such progress had been made, that 32,000 pounds weight were sold in fifteen days, and at least 10,000 of the inhabitants habitually ate horse-flesh.’ And now Parisian banquets of horse-flesh are common.

These facts are at all events curious. Think of the prejudices to be overcome, and think how unreasoning is the stomach!

Young horses are too valuable to be brought to the shambles, unless killed by accident. But our worn-out hacks, of which 250 or 300 die or are killed weekly in the metropolis,--old horses used up, are capable, we are assured, of furnishing good meat. An old horse, which had done duty for twenty-five years, was the substance of a learned gastronomic feast at Paris.

M. St. Hilaire, the champion of this new addition to our food resources, reasons in this fashion:--‘Horse-flesh has long been regarded as of a sweetish disagreeable taste, very tough, and not to be eaten without difficulty. So many different facts are opposed to this prejudice, that it is impossible not to recognize its slight foundation. The free or wild horse is hunted as game in all parts of the world where it exists--Asia, Africa, and America--and formerly, and perhaps even now, in Europe. The domestic horse itself is made use of as alimentary as well as auxiliary--in some cases altogether alimentary--in Africa, America, Asia, and in some parts of Europe.

‘Its flesh is relished by people the most different in their manner of life, and of races the most diverse, negro, Mongol, Malay, American, Caucasian. It was much esteemed up to the eighth century among the ancestors of some of the greatest nations of Western Europe, who had it in general use, and gave it up with regret. Soldiers to whom it has been served out, and people in towns who have bought it in markets, have frequently taken it for beef. Still more often, and indeed habitually, it has been sold in restaurants, even in the best, as venison, and without the customers ever suspecting the fraud or complaining of it.

‘And further, if horse-flesh has been often accepted as good under a false name, it has also been pronounced good by those who, to judge of its qualities, have submitted it to careful experiment, and by all who have tasted it in a proper condition, that is, when taken from a sound and rested horse, and kept sufficiently long. It is then excellent roasted; and if it be not so acceptable as _bouilli_, it is precisely because it furnishes one of the best soups--perhaps the best that is known.

‘It is good also, as experiments prove made by myself as well as others, when taken from old horses not fattened, whose age was 16, 19, 20, and even 23 years, animals thought worth no more than a few francs beyond the value of their skin.

‘This is a capital fact, since it shows the possibility of utilizing a second time, for their flesh, horses which have already been utilized up to old age for their strength; and, consequently, of obtaining a further and almost gratuitous profit at the end of their life, after they had well nigh paid the cost of their rearing and keep by their labour.’

Let us see what additional evidence M. St. Hilaire has to adduce. First, he appeals to his long experience at the _Jardin des Plantes_, where the greater part of the _carnivora_ are habitually fed on horse-flesh, which keeps them healthy in spite of many unfavourable conditions. But this will not carry much weight with it. Our digestion is not quite so good as that of a lion. The condor has been known to eat, with satisfaction, food which Mrs. Brown would find little to her taste. No dietetic rule for men can be deduced from the digestions of tigers. We prefer the experience of human stomachs. Fortunately this is not wanting, and M. St. Hilaire collects an imposing mass of evidence. Huzard, the celebrated veterinary surgeon, records, that during the revolution, the population of Paris was for six months dieted with horse-flesh, without any ill effects. Some complaints, indeed, were made when it was found that the _beef_ came from horses; but, in spite of prejudice and the terrors such a discovery may have raised, no single case of illness was attributed to the food. Larrey, the great army surgeon, declares that on very many occasions during the campaigns, he administered horse-flesh to the soldiers, and to the soldiers sick in the hospital; and instead of finding it injurious, it powerfully contributed to the convalescence of the sick, and drove away a scorbutic epidemic which attacked the men. The testimony of Parent Duchâtelet is also quoted to the same effect. M. St. Hilaire feels himself abundantly authorized to declare that horse-flesh, far from being unwholesome, is one of the most nutritious and wholesome of alimentary substances: and, to support this declaration, he adduces the testimony of historians and travellers, showing how whole tribes and nations have habitually eaten and highly esteemed it.

Having thus, as he considers, satisfactorily settled the question of wholesomeness, M. St. Hilaire proceeds to deal with the question of agreeableness. Is wholesome horse-flesh agreeable enough to tempt men, not starving, to eat it? It is, of course, of little use that historians and travellers tell of hippophagists--it is nothing to the purpose that soldiers in a campaign, or citizens during a siege, have eaten horses with considerable relish. Under such circumstances, one’s old shoe is not to be despised as a _pièce de résistance_; and one’s grandmother may be a toothsome morsel. The real point to be settled in the European mind is this--apart from all conditions which must bias the judgment, is horse-flesh pleasant to the taste? M. St. Hilaire cites the evidence of eminent men who, having eaten it knowing what it was, pronounced it excellent--all declaring that it was better than cow-beef, and some that there was little difference between it and ox-beef.

But perhaps the reader, having eaten German beef, has a not ill-grounded suspicion that horse-flesh might bear honourable comparison with such meat, and yet be at best of mediocre savour. Let us, therefore, says a writer in the _Saturday Review_, cite the example of Parisian banquets, where the convives were men accustomed to the _Trois Frères_, _Philippe’s_, and the _Café de Paris_. M. Renault, the director of the great Veterinary College at Alfort, had a horse brought to him with an incurable paralysis of the hinder extremities. It was killed, and three days afterwards, on the 1st December, 1855, eleven guests were invited--physicians, journalists, veterinary surgeons, and _employés_ of the government. Side by side were dishes prepared by the same cook, in precisely the same manner, and with the same pieces taken respectively from this horse and from an ox of good quality. The _bouillon_ of beef was flanked by a _bouillon_ of horse, the _bouilli_ of beef by a _bouilli_ of horse, the fillet of roast beef by a fillet of roast horse; and a comparison was to be made of their qualities. Dr. Amédée Latour thus writes:--

‘_Bouillon de cheval._--Surprise générale! C’est parfait, c’est excellent, c’est nourri, c’est corse, c’est aromatique, c’est riche de goût.

‘Le bouillon de _bœuf_ est bon, mais _comparativement inférieur_, moins accentué de goût, moins parfumé, moins résistant de sapidité.’

The jury unanimously pronounced the horse _bouillon_ superior to that of the ox. The _bouilli_, on the contrary, they thought inferior to that of good beef, although superior to ordinary beef, and certainly superior to all cow-beef. The roast fillet, again, they found superior to that of the ox; and M. Latour thus sums up the experiment:--

Un bouillon supérieur; Un bouilli bon et très-mangeable; Un rôti exquis.