Of the many English breeds the Tamworth has been found the best bacon pig. It is one of the eldest breeds and is nearly related to the wild boar. It benefited by the methods of improvement inaugurated by Bakewell and his pupil, Colling; together with some other English breeds, it has helped to modify, and in some cases has eliminated, the kinds of pigs indigenous to European countries. The Danish curers admit that without the importation of stock from England "their bacon would never have taken such high rank in the world's markets."
In the United States, unfortunately, most of the breeds are lard-hogs. "Bacon pigs," says Professor Robert Wallace, "fed on Indian corn degenerate into lard-hogs."
Now lard is doubtless a profitable article to raise, both for home use and for export. But in the kitchen the use of lard is an anachronism, since it has become generally known that butter and olive oil and beef suet are far superior to it in the yield of agreeable Flavors. Yankee ingenuity may even succeed in producing really palatable vegetable oils for cooking—a consummation devoutly to be wished, because it will help along the efforts to substitute the bacon pig for the lard hog.
When Julius Sterling Morton was United States Secretary of Agriculture he published a document which attracted much attention. It was based mainly on a communication received from an American official in England who advised American farmers, if they would secure a share of the profitable Danish and Canadian trade in cured bacon of a superior quality, to give up the various American breeds and substitute the British Tamworths or their crosses. That was many years ago, but American bacon is still for the most part what it should not be, although efforts have been made to improve it.
In the "Journal of the (British) Board of Agriculture" (1909-10, pp. 99-107) there is an interesting article on Coöperative Bacon Curing, the author of which says that the most useful breeds of pigs in the United Kingdom for bacon are Yorkshire and Berkshire breeds. But "a pure breed of pigs is not wanted by the bacon curer. What he wants is a bacon pig, and this is an animal which does not belong to any particular breed."
What is a bacon pig? The same writer answers: "A bacon pig should mature in about seven months and should weigh about 168 pounds. This yields the best and most profitable bacon. A bacon pig, furthermore, must be long in body and deep in side.... This form is desirable because it is the side of the hog that furnishes the best and most expensive cuts, and it is necessary to have as much as possible of this at the expense of the other parts."
Bacon curing as an organized industry is not much over half a century old. The Wiltshire cure of bacon is, however, referred to as far back as 1705 by Edward Lisle, in his "Observations in Husbandry." Many years later there came a great expansion of trade in Wiltshire County which made the name world-famed. To this day the bulk of British bacon is cured in Wiltshire fashion in whole sides.
There are about fifty bacon factories in the United Kingdom. While their capacity is not so great as that of the factories in the United States, the treatment and quality of American meat are, as the writer just cited remarks, "much below the standard aimed at in the United Kingdom, and notwithstanding the immense supplies of bacon which reach our country from abroad, the high price of the home product is on this account maintained."
It must not be supposed that all the bacon offered for sale in England is of superior quality. Sanders Spencer complained some years ago that the Irish bacon-curers were resting on their laurels; that a very large proportion of the pigs found in England "would be looked upon with disgust by the Danes and Canadians and that much of the meat from our home-bred pigs is inferior to a great deal of imported pork."
The temptation to use denaturing chemical preservatives and to smoke insufficiently, or not at all, in order to save weight exists in England as in America and must be combated by the consumer.