Page:The Hog.djvu/209

207 "He must be roasted. I am not ignorant that our ancestors ate them seethed or boiled; but what a sacrifice of the exterior tegument!

"There is no flavor comparable, I will contend, to that of the crisp, tawny, well watched, not over-roasted, crackling, as it is well called; the very teeth are invited to their share of the pleasure at this banquet, in overcoming the coy, brittle resistance, with the adhesive oleaginous—Oh, call it not fat!—but an indefinable sweetness growing up to it—the tender blossoming of fat—fat cropped in the bud—taken in the shoot—in the first innocence—the cream and quintessence of the child-pig's yet pure food; the lean, no lean; but a kind of animal manna, or rather, fat and lean (if it must be so) so blended and running into each other, that both together make but one ambrosian result, or common substance.

"Behold him while he is doing! it seemeth rather a refreshing warmth than a scorching heat that he is so passive to. How equally he twirleth round the string. Now he is just done. To see the extreme sensibility of that tender age; he hath wept out his pretty eyes—radiant jellies—shooting stars. See him in the dish, his second cradle; how meek he lieth! wouldst thou have this innocent grow up to the grossness and indocility which too often accompany maturer swinehood? Ten to one he would have proved a glutton, a sloven, an obstinate, disagreeable animal, wallowing in all filthy conversation—from these sins he is happily snatched away. Ere sin could blight or sorrow fade, Death came with timely care.

"His memory is odoriferous: no clown curseth, whilst his stomach half ejecteth the rank bacon; no coalheaver bolteth him in reeking sausages: he hath a fair sepulchre in the grateful stomach of the judicious epicure, and for such a tomb might be content to die.

"Pig—let me speak his praise—is no less provocative of the appetite than he is satisfactory to the criticalness of the censorious palate. The strong man may batten on him, and the weakling refuseth not his mild juices.

"Unlike to mankind's mixed characters, a bundle of virtues and vices, inexplicably intertwisted and not to be unravelled without hazard, he is—good throughout. No part of him is better or worse than another. He helpeth, as far as his little means goeth, all around."

Sucking-pigs should be killed at from a fortnight to three weeks old. The Chinese breed furnishes the most delicate and delicious "porklings." They should be stuck; all the blood suffered to drain out; scalded and scraped gently; and the bowels taken out, and the inside sponged dry and clean.