AH, bacon. Breakfast behemoth, saviour of the sandwich and the frying pan’s erstwhile friend. Who can resist that pork-scented siren call, an olfactory allurement so seductive that it turns taste buds tumescent and vegetarian virtue the way of all flesh? When a man is tired of bacon, as Samuel Johnson almost said, he is also tired of life.
Gloriously democratic, bacon cares little for class, cash or snobbery, devoured on Formica-topped tables and solid silver platters alike. It pays no heed to the bourgeois strictures of formal eating, either. A predawn snack and a feast before bed, crowning a burger, buried in burrito, slow-cooked with cabbage, sprinkled into salad or even slipped into fudge. ‘Landlord, bring us beans and bacon and a bottle of your finest Burgundy,’ cries some jolly character in the pages of G. K. Chesterton. Good bacon will never let you down.
And that’s the point. Just as with sausages, their blessed brethren, quality is all. At its best, all crisp-edged fat, sweet succour and gentle smoke, it’s one of the pinnacles of the meat curer’s art. At its worst, made with wretched, intensively farmed pigs, injected with brine and slathered with chemical ‘smoke’, it’s a scum-coated travesty of bitter despair.
Denne historien er fra October 20, 2021-utgaven av Country Life UK.
Start din 7-dagers gratis prøveperiode på Magzter GOLD for å få tilgang til tusenvis av utvalgte premiumhistorier og 9000+ magasiner og aviser.
Allerede abonnent ? Logg på
Denne historien er fra October 20, 2021-utgaven av Country Life UK.
Start din 7-dagers gratis prøveperiode på Magzter GOLD for å få tilgang til tusenvis av utvalgte premiumhistorier og 9000+ magasiner og aviser.
Allerede abonnent? Logg på
Happiness in small things
Putting life into perspective and forces of nature in farming
Colour vision
In an eye-baffling arrangement of geometric shapes, a sinister-looking clown and a little girl, Test Card F is one of television’s most enduring images, says Rob Crossan
'Without fever there is no creation'
Three of the top 10 operas performed worldwide are by the emotionally volatile Italian composer Giacomo Puccini, who died a century ago. Henrietta Bredin explains how his colourful life influenced his melodramatic plot lines
The colour revolution
Toxic, dull or fast-fading pigments had long made it tricky for artists to paint verdant scenes, but the 19th century ushered in a viridescent explosion of waterlili
Bullace for you
The distinction between plums, damsons and bullaces is sweetly subtle, boiling down to flavour and aesthetics, but don’t eat the stones, warns John Wright
Lights, camera, action!
Three remarkable country houses, two of which have links to the film industry, the other the setting for a top-class croquet tournament, are anything but ordinary
I was on fire for you, where did you go?
In Iceland, a land with no monks or monkeys, our correspondent attempts to master the art of fishing light’ for Salmo salar, by stroking the creases and dimples of the Midfjardara river like the features of a loved one
Bravery bevond belief
A teenager on his gap year who saved a boy and his father from being savaged by a crocodile is one of a host of heroic acts celebrated in a book to mark the 250th anniversary of the Royal Humane Society, says its author Rupert Uloth
Let's get to the bottom of this
Discovering a well on your property can be viewed as a blessing or a curse, but all's well that ends well, says Deborah Nicholls-Lee, as she examines the benefits of a personal water supply
Sing on, sweet bird
An essential component of our emotional relationship with the landscape, the mellifluous song of a thrush shapes the very foundation of human happiness, notes Mark Cocker, as he takes a closer look at this diverse family of birds
