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A ginger sow and her piglets at the Ginger Pig’s Yorkshire farm. Photo: The Ginger Pig

When we think about pigs today, most of us likely imagine the Wilbur or Babe-type variety: pink and more or less hairless. Mention pig farming and images of hundreds upon hundreds of animals crammed into indoor cages may come to mind, too. But it wasn’t always like this. Prior to the industrial revolution, pigs came in an astounding variety of shapes, sizes, colors and personalities. And the ham made from their cured meat was just as diverse.

“The tale of ham’s innovation began around 200 years ago, and it paved the way for how ham is produced today,” said Nicola Swift, the creative food director of the Ginger Pig, a company of butchers and farmers that specializes in rare breeds of livestock reared in England’s North York Moors. Swift presented a talk on the history of ham at the BACON conference in London last weekend, which sadly was not devoted to bacon but to “things developers love.”

One family in particular, the Harrises, almost single-handily changed the way England turned pigs into ham, she explained, and in doing so, they inadvertently laid the foundations for large-scale, homogenized pig farming.

Mary and John Harris were pig folk. Their family hailed from Calne, a quiet town in Southwest England. In the early and mid-1800s, they played a small but important role in providing London with pork. At the time, much of London’s pork arrived by way of Ireland. But without refrigeration, transporting large amounts of meat was impossible. Instead, pig handlers would literally walk the animals to the Irish coast, corral them onto boats destined for Bristol, and then continue to trek to London by foot.

But a deliciously fat pig forced to trot more than 100 miles would soon turn into a lean, tough mass of muscle. To make sure the ham, chops and bacon that those animals were destined to become remained fatty, tender and flavorful, pig herders would make pit stops along the way to give the animals a rest and fatten them up. The Harris farm was one such destination. The family also supplied Calne with meat from their small shop on Butcher’s Row, founded in 1770.

The Harrises were by no means well off. If they butchered 6 or 8 pigs in a week they wrote it off as a success. Still, they got by all right. That is, until tragedy struck. In 1837, John Harris, the relatively young head of the household, died suddenly, leaving his wife, Mary, to manage the business and look after the couple’s 12 children. A few years later, just as the family was getting back on its feet, hard times fell upon them once again. It was 1847, and the Irish potato famine arrived.

In Ireland, potatoes fed not only people but their pigs, too. As season after season of potato crops failed, the Irish could not feed themselves, much less their animals. The supply of pork to the Harris’ farm and butcher shop stopped arriving. In desperation, Mary and her son, George, hatched a scheme to send George to America by ship. The idea, they decided, was for George to strike up a pig business deal with American farmers and figure out a way to transport their slaughtered animals across the Atlantic in boxes packed with salt to ward off spoilage during the long journey. On its way to England, that meat would cure into ham and George’s entrepreneurial venture would save the family.

Not surprisingly, George failed in his mission. But while in the States, he did learn of a remarkable new practice the Americans were pursuing called ice houses. In the U.S., this method allowed farmers to slaughter pigs not only in months ending in an ‘r’ (or those cold enough for the meat not to rot before it could be cured and preserved), but during any time of year – even in steamy July or August. Curing, or the process of preventing decomposition-causing bacteria from setting in by packing the meat in salt, was then the only way to preserve pork for periods of time longer than 36 hours. Such horrendously salty meat was eaten out of necessity rather than enjoyment, however, and it often required sitting in a bucket of water for days at time before it could be rinsed of its saltiness to the point that it would even be palatable. ”This all harks back to the day when people had to preserve something when they had lots of it because there were other times when they didn’t have much,” Swift said. “This type of preserving goes back hundreds and hundreds of years.”

Ice houses, specially constructed sheds with packed ice blocks either collected locally or imported from Norway, offered partial relief from that practice, however. Charcoal acted as an insulator, preventing the ice from melting quickly and trapping the cool air within the small room.

When George returned home, curly tail between legs, he immediately got busy earning back his family’s trust by experimenting with ice house design. By 1856, he had succeeded in constructing what was likely the first ice house in England. The ham that resulted from slaughtering pigs in that cool confine was more tender and tasty since it didn’t have to be aggressively cured with large amounts of salt. Eventually, the Harrises shifted to brining techniques, or curing in liquid, which led to the creation of the massively popular Wiltshire ham.

The family patented George’s creation, and it soon began spreading to other farmers and ham producers who licensed the technology around the country. The Harris’ wealth increased so quickly and so dramatically that they partly financed the construction of a branch of the Great Western Railway to their village in 1863. Several decades after that, they helped bring electricity to Calne.

When breeders cross a ginger pig with a black pig, the results are a delightful black-spotted ginger piglet. Photo: The Ginger Pig

While the Harris’ tale is one of personal triumph, their mark on England’s ham production did not come without cultural costs. Prior to the ice house, each region in the UK and Ireland enjoyed their own specific breed of pig. In Lincolnshire, for example, Lincolnshire ham originated from the Lincolnshire curly coat, an enormous beast of a pig that was around twice the size of the animals typically bred today. It’s long, thick curly white coat kept the hardy animal warm throughout the damp winters, and its high fat content provided plenty of energy for the farm laborers that relied upon its exceptionally salty ham for sustenance. After a long decline, that breed finally went extinct in the 1970s thanks to industrialized farming.

Other regions once boasted their own breeds and unique ham brews. In Shropshire, people made “black ham,” which they cured along with molasses, beer and spices. This created an exceptional mix of salty sweetness, with a tinge of sourness from the beer. In Yorkshire, a breed called the large white – which is still around today – inspired a method of steaming cured ham in order to more efficiently remove the salt, while in Gloucestershire people preferred to add apples to their ham cures. But after the Harris’ ham empire took off, a massive advertising campaign that followed painted a picture of what ham and bacon should look and taste like, largely removing these traditions from kitchens around the country. “Most of the regional variances are sadly not known any more except to ham geeks,” Swift said.

In addition to stamping out ham variety, the Harris’ factory – which soon employed hundreds of staff and processed thousands of pigs each week – and others like it began favoring homogenized mass-production methods of indoor pig rearing. Older residents in Calne recall the factory’s unmistakable reek in the 1930s. Eventually, public protests caused its closure and demolition in the 1960s, but for local pigs and ham, the damage was already done. Between 1900 to 1973, 26 of the unique regional breeds of pigs and other livestock went extinct, with others surviving only in very small numbers.

To try and preserve pig and other livestock heritage, concerned citizens formed the non-profit Rare Breeds Survival Trust in 1973, which maintains a sort of endangered species list and conservation group for farm animals on the fringe. In addition, farms such as Swift’s Ginger Pig specialize in breeding and reintroducing some of these lines into restaurants and local butcher shops in London and beyond, and in introducing traditional curing techniques through their upcoming book, the Farmhouse Cook Book. “Innovation is awesome and brilliant, but there’s also a dark side,” Swift said. “That’s the history of ham.”

Blackstrap molasses. Image courtesy of Flickr user FotoosVanRobin.

People between North Carolina and Vermont are cleaning up after Irene, the storm that destructively tromped along the eastern seaboard this past weekend. Hurricanes in the northeast are pretty rare and can leave people at a loss for how to prepare for extraordinarily severe conditions. At the very least, there are standard pieces of advice you can use to more or less muddle through a nasty situation. But perhaps even rarer are freak events involving food that cause a lot of damage. Those with an appetite for tragic tales might enjoy the following:

London Beer Flood: In the late 18th century, the Meux family brewery attained celebrity status, at least on account of the spectacular size of the vats they used to craft porter—one had the capacity to hold some 20,000 barrels of beer. Unfortunately, the hoops holding one of the vats together had corroded, and on the evening of October 17, 1814, they completely gave out, loosing some 3,500 barrels of beer that knocked down the brewery walls and flooded Tottenham Court, killing eight.

The Great Mill Disaster: Built in 1874, the Washburn “A” Mill along sat along the east bank of the Mississippi River in Minneapolis, Minnesota and at the time was the largest flour-making facility in the United States. “Was,” unfortunately, is the operative word. On the evening of May 2, 1878, the stones used to grind grain gave off sparks, igniting particles of flour dust in the air and causing a massive explosion. (Flour, a carbohydrate, is made mostly of sugar and burns very easily.) In all, 18 people were killed and the blast started other fires that destroyed six nearby mills.

Boston Molasses Disaster: In Boston’s North End, near the city’s financial district and working class Italian neighborhoods, there stood a molasses tank owned by the Purity Distilling Company. Built in 1915, the vat was capable of holding some 2.5 million gallons; however, by 1919, locals were complaining that it was leaking, and on the afternoon of January 15, it exploded. Flying metal knocked out the supports of nearby elevated train tracks and a 15-foot-high wave of molasses crashed through the streets at some 35 miles per hour, knocking down and enveloping people in its path. Parts of Boston were standing in two to three feet of molasses and the disaster left 21 dead and 150 injured.

Basra Mass Poisoning: In the winter of 1971, shipment of grain arrived in Basra, Iraq; however, it was treated with a methylmercury fungicide and was intended only for use on seed. (If ingested, methylmercury can cause serious neurological damage, and in high doses, can be deadly.) The bags were accordingly marked poison—although only in English and Spanish—and the grains were dyed bright pink to indicate they were not for consumption. Nevertheless, bags of grain were stolen before they could be distributed to farmers, the dye washed off and the grain sold as food. (Another account says that the grain was freely given away and the recipients thought that washing off the dye would rid the grain of mercury, making it safe to eat.) Some 6,500 people were hospitalized, 459 of whom died.

This month’s Inviting Writing challenge was to tell us about the most memorable meal of your life. We got a wide range of entries—stay tuned each Monday for a new one—and Erika Janik starts us off with a story about the best and worst of meals.

Janik is a Madison-based freelance writer, author, and a producer at Wisconsin Public Radio. Her web site is erikajanik.net and she writes a blog called “Curious About Everything.”

A view of Stratford-upon-Avon, courtesy of Flickr user chemicalbrother

Fed by Thugs

By Erika Janik

My most memorable meal came from a deep and abiding lack of good food. I was in London, in Europe for the first time, as a 20-year-old taking a course on British politics for a month. We spent three weeks in a cheap hotel near Kensington Palace, eating breakfast every morning and dinner every night in the subterranean hotel restaurant known as the Zebra Club.

Every morning we descended into the basement to the sounds of techno and roving colored lights on the dance floor. The Zebra Club clearly took its “club” designation seriously, morning or night, though I never saw anyone dancing. Breakfast was cold toast, served angrily by a man who doubled as the front desk attendant by night. Coming off an all-night shift, he finished his day at 8 a.m. by shoving cheap slices of store-bought bread onto one of those toaster conveyor belts common to cafeterias. He glared at me, daring me take a slice that he had slammed down. Often, he missed the plate and the errant toast would skitter across the crumb-covered tablecloth and onto the floor.

Other breakfast options included stale wheat flakes, worse than the store brand my roommates and I bought to save money back home, and stewed prunes that only old people in children’s stories seemed to love. There was also a pitcher of warm whole milk that tasted incredibly thick and strange to someone who’d had only two percent or skim milk before. We washed all of this down with weak coffee and pitchers of orange-colored but orange-flavor-less juice.

Breakfast was also when we selected which of the two dinner options we wanted. Everything, meat or pasta (and those were the two options all three weeks), came covered in a viscous, metallic-tasting sauce that was either pale red or highlighter yellow. Potatoes, carrots, everything tasted like I imagined the metal filings at the hardware store would taste. Failure to clean your plate—and I failed most nights—often resulted in a menacing visit from the tattooed Eastern European chef who came to my side with a chef’s knife in each hand and a maniacal grin. I’m sure he thought he was being funny, but his thick accent, torn shirt, and inked pictures of knives, blood, and pirates covering his arms somehow failed to make me laugh. Instead, I kept a careful watch on the kitchen doors, feeling nauseous each time they even so much as fluttered. I think I lost ten pounds.

So it was with extreme relief that I checked out of my room for our class road trip through several English towns for the final week of class. Our first stop was Stratford-upon-Avon, where we stayed in a half-timbered hotel straight out of a storybook. We trooped down to the hotel restaurant for dinner and were greeted with platters of food served family-style: plates of potatoes, broccoli, carrots, lamb, beef, bread, and fruit.

Nervously, I placed a single brown potato on my plate to start. I cut it open and took a tentative bite. Three weeks of the Zebra Club had made me fearful of food; I never thought that would happen. The first bite was amazing. It was the most delicious potato I had ever eaten simply because it tasted of nothing but potato. A tear ran down my cheek before I could wipe it away. I looked anxiously around to see if anyone had noticed. I felt ridiculous at my joy over something so simple, but extreme hunger for something familiar and pure can do that to a person. I had no trouble cleaning my plate several times over that night. My unintentional diet was over. And eleven years on, that meal remains one of the most memorable of my life.