a dissertation upon roast pig

A DISSERTATION UPON ROAST PIG

BY CHARLES LAMB

Illustrated by L. J. Bridgman

BOSTON D. LOTHROP COMPANY FRANKLIN AND HAWLEY STREETS

Copyright, 1888 BY D. Lothrop Company.

PRESSWORK BY BERWICK & SMITH, BOSTON.

UPON ROAST PIG

Mankind, says a Chinese manuscript, which my friend M. was obliging enough to read and explain to me, for the first seventy thousand ages ate their meat raw, clawing or biting it from the living animal, just as they do in Abyssinia to this day. This period is not obscurely hinted at by their great Confucius in the second chapter of his Mundane Mutations, where he designates a kind of golden age by the term Cho-fang, literally the Cooks' holiday. The manuscript goes on to say, that the art of roasting, or rather broiling (which I take to be the elder brother) was accidentally discovered in the manner following: The swineherd, Ho-ti, having gone out in the woods one morning, as his manner was, to collect masts for his hogs, left his cottage in the care of his eldest son Bo-bo, a great lubberly boy, who being fond of playing with fire, as younkers of his age commonly are, let some sparks escape into a bundle of straw, which kindling quickly, spread the conflagration over every part of their poor mansion, till it was reduced to ashes. Together with the cottage, (a sorry antediluvian makeshift of a building, you may think it), what was of much more importance, a fine litter of new-farrowed pigs, no less than nine in number, perished. China pigs had been esteemed a luxury all over the East, from the remotest periods that we read of. Bo-bo was in the utmost consternation, as you may think, not so much for the sake of the tenement, which his father and he could easily build up again with a few dry branches, and the labour of an hour or two, at any time, as for the loss of the pigs. While he was thinking what he should say to his father, and wringing his hands over the smoking remnants of one of those untimely sufferers, an odour assailed his nostrils, unlike any scent which he had before experienced. What could it proceed from?—not from the burnt cottage—he had smelt that smell before—indeed this was by no means the first accident of the kind which had occured through the negligence of this unlucky young firebrand. Much less did it resemble that of any known herb, weed, or flower. A premonitory moistening at the same time overflowed his nether lip. He knew not what to think. He next stooped down to feel the pig, if there were any signs of life in it. He burnt his fingers, and to cool them he applied them in his booby fashion to his mouth. Some of the crumbs of the scorched skin had come away with his fingers, and for the first time in his life (in the world's life indeed, for before him no man had known it) he tasted— crackling ! Again he felt and fumbled at the pig. It did not burn him so much now, still he licked his finger from a sort of habit. The truth at length broke into his slow understanding, that it was the pig that smelt so, and the pig that tasted so delicious; and surrendering himself up to the newborn pleasure, he fell to tearing up whole handfuls of the scorched skin with the flesh next it, and was cramming it down his throat in his beastly fashion, when his sire entered amid the smoking rafters, armed with retributory cudgel, and finding how affairs stood, began to rain blows upon the young rogue's shoulders, as thick as hailstones, which Bo-bo heeded not any more than if they had been flies. The tickling pleasure which he experienced in his lower regions, had rendered him quite callous to any inconveniences he might feel in those remote quarters. His father might lay on, but he could not beat him from his pig, till he had fairly made an end of it, when, becoming a little more sensible of his situation, something like the following dialogue ensued:

"You graceless whelp, what have you got there devouring? Is it not enough that you have burnt me down three houses with your dog's tricks, and be hanged to you, but you must be eating fire, and I know not what—what have you got there, I say?"

"O father, the pig, the pig! do come and taste how nice the burnt pig eats."

The ears of Ho-ti tingled with horror. He cursed his son, and he cursed himself that ever he should beget a son that should eat burnt pig.

Bo-bo, whose scent was wonderfully sharpened since morning, soon raked out another pig, and fairly rending it asunder, thrust the lesser half by main force into the fists of Ho-ti, still shouting out, "Eat, eat, eat the burnt pig, father, only taste—O Lord,"—with such-like barbarous ejaculations, cramming all the while as if he would choke.

Ho-ti trembled every joint while he grasped the abominable things wavering whether he should not put his son to death for an unnatural young monster, when the crackling scorching his fingers, as it had done his son's, and applying the same remedy to them, he in his turn tasted some of its flavour, which, make what sour mouths he would for a pretence, proved not altogether displeasing to him. In conclusion (for the manuscript here is a little tedious) both father and son fairly sat down to the mess, and never left off till they had despatched all that remained of the litter.

Bo-bo was strictly enjoined not to let the secret escape, for the neighbors would certainly have stoned them for a couple of abominable wretches, who could think of improving upon the good meat which God had sent them. Nevertheless, strange stories got about. It was observed that Ho-ti's cottage was burnt down now more frequently than ever. Nothing but fires from this time forward. Some would break out in broad day, others in the night-time. As often as the sow farrowed, so sure was the house of Ho-ti to be in a blaze; and Ho-ti himself, which was the more remarkable, instead of chastising his son, seemed to grow more indulgent to him than ever. At length they were watched, the terrible mystery discovered, and father and son summoned to take their trial at Pekin, than an inconsiderable assize town. Evidence was given, the obnoxious food itself produced in court, and verdict about to be pronounced, when the foreman of the jury begged that some of the burnt pig, of which the culprits stood accused, might be handed into the box. He handled it, and they all handled it, and burning their fingers, as Bo-bo and his father had done before them, and nature prompting to each of them the same remedy, against the face of all the facts, and the clearest charge which judge had ever given,—to the surprise of the whole court, townsfolk, strangers, reporters, and all present—without leaving the box, or any manner of consultation whatever, they brought in a simultaneous verdict of Not Guilty.

The judge, who was a shrewd fellow, winked at the manifest iniquity of the decision; and, when the court was dismissed, went privily, and bought up all the pigs that could be had for love or money. In a few days his Lordship's town house was observed to be on fire. The thing took wing, and now there was nothing to be seen but fires in every direction. Fuel and pigs grew enormously dear all over the district. The insurance offices one and all shut up shop. People built slighter and slighter every day, until it was feared that the very science of architecture would in no long time be lost to the world. Thus this custom of firing houses continued, till in process of time, says my manuscript, a sage arose, like our Locke, who made a discovery, that the flesh of swine, or indeed of any other animal, might be cooked ( burnt , as they call it) without the necessity of consuming a whole house to dress it. Then first began the rude form of a gridiron. Roasting by the string, or spit, came in a century or two later, I forget in whose dynasty. By such slow degrees, concludes the manuscript, do the most useful, and seemingly the most obvious arts, make their way among mankind.

Without placing too implicit faith in the account above given, it must be agreed, that if a worthy pretext for so dangerous an experiment as setting houses on fire (especially in these days) could be assigned in favour of any culinary object, that pretext and excuse might be found in roast pig.

Of all the delicacies in the whole mundus edibilis , I will maintain it to be the most delicate— princeps obsoniorum .

I speak not of your grown porkers—things between pig and pork—those hobbydehoys—but a young and tender suckling—under a moon old—guiltless as yet of the sty—with no original speck of the amor immunditiæ , the hereditary failing of the first parent, yet manifest—his voice as yet not broken, but something between a childish treble, and a grumble—the mild forerunner, or præludium , of a grunt.

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 flavour 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—O call it not fat—but an indefiable 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, then a scorching heat, that he is so passive to. How equably 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 had 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 manner of filthy conversation—from these sins he is happily snatched away—

Ere sin could blight, or sorrow fade,

Death came with timely care—

He is the best of sapors. Pineapple is great. She is indeed almost too transcendent—a delight, if not sinful, yet so like to sinning, that really a tender-conscienced person would do well to pause—too ravishing for mortal taste, she woundeth and excoriateth the lips that approach her—like lover's kisses, she biteth—she is a pleasure bordering on pain from the fierceness and insanity of her relish—but she stoppeth at the palate—she meddleth not with the appetite—and the coarsest hunger might barter her consistently for a mutton chop.

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 extend, all around. He is the least envious of banquets. He is all neighbors' fare.

I am one of those, who freely and ungrudgingly impart a share of the good things of this life which fall to their lot (few as mine are in this kind) to a friend. I protest I take as great an interest in my friend's pleasures, his relishes, and proper satisfactions, as in mine own. "Presents," I often say, "endear Absents." Hares, pheasants, partridges, snipes, barn-door chickens (those "tame villatic fowl"), capons, plovers, brawn, barrels of oysters, I dispense as freely as I receive them. I love to taste them, as it were, upon the tongue of my friend. But a stop must be put somewhere. One would not, like Lear, "give everything." I make my stand upon pig. Methinks it is an ingratitude to the Giver of all good flavours, to extra-domiciliate, or send out of the house, slightingly (under pretext of friendship, or I know not what), a blessing so particularly adapted, predestined, I may say, to my individual palate—It argues an insensibility.

I remember a touch of conscience in this kind at school. My good old aunt, who never parted from me at the end of a holiday without stuffing a sweetmeat, or some nice thing, into my pocket, had dismissed me one evening with a smoking plum-cake, fresh from the oven. In my way to school (it was over London Bridge) a gray-headed old beggar saluted me (I have no doubt at this time of day that he was a counterfeit). I had no pence to console him with, and in the vanity of self-denial, and the very coxcombry of charity, schoolboy-like, I made him a present of—the whole cake! I walked on a little, buoyed up, as one is on such occasions, with a sweet soothing of self-satisfaction; but before I had got to the end of the bridge, my better feelings returned, and I burst into tears, thinking how ungrateful I had been to my good aunt, to go and give her good gift away to a stranger, that I had never seen before, and who might be a bad man for aught I knew; and then I thought of the pleasure my aunt would be taking in thinking that I—I myself, and not another—would eat her nice cake—and what should I say to her the next time I saw her—how naughty I was to part with her pretty present—and the odour of that spicy cake came back upon my recollection, and the pleasure and the curiosity I had taken in seeing her make it, and her joy when she sent it to the oven, and how disappointed she would feel that I had never had a bit of it in my mouth at last—and I blamed my impertinent spirit of almsgiving, and out-of-place hypocrisy of goodness, and above all I wished never to see the face again of that insiduous, good-for-nothing, old gray impostor.

Our ancestors were nice in their method of sacrificing these tender victims. We read of pigs whipt to death with something of a shock, as we hear of any other obsolete custom. The age of discipline is gone by, or it would be curious to inquire (in a philosophical light merely) what effect this process might have towards intenerating and dulcifying a substance, naturally so mild and dulcet as the flesh of young pigs. It looks like refining a violet. Yet we should be cautious, while we condemn the inhumanity, how we censure the wisdom of the practice. It might impart a gusto—

I remember an hypothesis, argued upon by the young students, when I was at St. Omer's, and maintained with much learning and pleasantry on both sides, "Whether, supposing that the flavor of a pig who obtained his death by whipping ( per flagellationem extremam ) superadded a pleasure upon the palate of a man more intense than any possible suffering we can conceive in the animal, is man justified in using that method of putting the animal to death?" I forget the decision.

His sauce should be considered. Decidedly, a few bread crumbs, done up with his liver and brains, and a dash of mild sage. But, banish, dear Mrs. Cook, I beseech you, the whole onion tribe. Barbecue your whole hogs to your palate, steep them in shalots, stuff them out with plantations of the rank and guilty garlic; you cannot poison them, or make them stronger than they are—but consider, he is a weakling—a flower.

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Charles Lamb

A dissertation upon roast pig

Mankind, says a Chinese manuscript, which my friend M. was obliging enough to read and explain to me, for the first seventy thousand ages ate their meat raw, clawing or biting it from the living animal, just as they do in Abyssinia to this day. This period is not obscurely hinted at by their great Confucius in the second chapter of his Mundane Mutations, where he designates a kind of golden age by the term Cho-fang, literally the Cooks’ holiday. The manuscript goes on to say, that the art of roasting, or rather broiling (which I take to be the elder brother) was accidentally discovered in the manner following. The swine-herd, Ho-ti, having gone out into the woods one morning, as his manner was, to collect mast for his hogs, left his cottage in the care of his eldest son Bo-bo, a great lubberly boy, who being fond of playing with fire, as younkers of his age commonly are, let some sparks escape into a bundle of straw, which kindling quickly, spread the conflagration over every part of their poor mansion, till it was reduced to ashes. Together with the cottage (a sorry antediluvian make-shift of a building, you may think it), what was of much more importance, a fine litter of new-farrowed pigs, no less than nine in number, perished. China pigs have been esteemed a luxury all over the East from the remotest periods that we read of. Bo-bo was in the utmost consternation, as you may think, not so much for the sake of the tenement, which his father and he could easily build up again with a few dry branches, and the labour of an hour or two, at any time, as for the loss of the pigs. While he was thinking what he should say to his father, and wringing his hands over the smoking remnants of one of those untimely sufferers, an odour assailed his nostrils, unlike any scent which he had before experienced. What could it proceed from?—not from the burnt cottage—he had smelt that smell before—indeed this was by no means the first accident of the kind which had occurred through the negligence of this unlucky young fire-brand. Much less did it resemble that of any known herb, weed, or flower. A premonitory moistening at the same time overflowed his nether lip. He knew not what to think. He next stooped down to feel the pig, if there were any signs of life in it. He burnt his fingers, and to cool them he applied them in his booby fashion to his mouth. Some of the crums of the scorched skin had come away with his fingers, and for the first time in his life (in the world’s life indeed, for before him no man had known it) he tasted— crackling ! Again he felt and fumbled at the pig. It did not burn him so much now, still he licked his fingers from a sort of habit. The truth at length broke into his slow understanding, that it was the pig that smelt so, and the pig that tasted so delicious; and, surrendering himself up to the newborn pleasure, he fell to tearing up whole handfuls of the scorched skin with the flesh next it, and was cramming it down his throat in his beastly fashion, when his sire entered amid the smoking rafters, armed with retributory cudgel, and finding how affairs stood, began to rain blows upon the young rogue’s shoulders, as thick as hail-stones, which Bo-bo heeded not any more than if they had been flies. The tickling pleasure, which he experienced in his lower regions, had rendered him quite callous to any inconveniences he might feel in those remote quarters. His father might lay on, but he could not beat him from his pig, till he had fairly made an end of it, when, becoming a little more sensible of his situation, something like the following dialogue ensued.

“You graceless whelp, what have you got there devouring? Is it not enough that you have burnt me down three houses with your dog’s tricks, and be hanged to you, but you must be eating fire, and I know not what—what have you got there, I say?”

“O father, the pig, the pig, do come and taste how nice the burnt pig eats.”

The ears of Ho-ti tingled with horror. He cursed his son, and he cursed himself that ever he should beget a son that should eat burnt pig.

Bo-bo, whose scent was wonderfully sharpened since moming, soon raked out another pig, and fairly rending it asunder, thrust the lesser half by main force into the fists of Ho-ti, still shouting out “Eat, eat, eat the burnt pig, father, only taste—O Lord,”—with such like barbarous ejaculations, cramming all the while as if he would choke.

Ho-ti trembled every joint while he grasped the abominable thing, wavering whether he should not put his son to death for an unnatural young monster, when the crackling scorching his fingers, as it had done his son’s, and applying the same remedy to them, he in his turn tasted some of its flavour, which, make what sour mouths he would for a pretence, proved not altogether displeasing to him. In conclusion (for the manuscript here is a little tedious) both father and son fairly sat down to the mess, and never left off till they had despatched all that remained of the litter.

Bo-bo was strictly enjoined not to let the secret escape, for the neighbours would certainly have stoned them for a couple of abominable wretches, who could think of improving upon the good meat which God had sent them. Nevertheless, strange stories got about. It was observed that Ho-ti’s cottage was burnt down now more frequently than ever. Nothing but fires from this time forward. Some would break out in broad day, others in the night-time. As often as the sow farrowed, so sure was the house of Ho-ti to be in a blaze; and Ho-ti himself, which was the more remarkable, instead of chastising his son, seemed to grow more indulgent to him than ever. At length they were watched, the terrible mystery discovered, and father and son summoned to take their trial at Pekin, then an inconsiderable assize town. Evidence was given, the obnoxious food itself produced in court, and verdict about to be pronounced, when the foreman of the jury begged that some of the burnt pig, of which the culprits stood accused, might be handed into the box. He handled it, and they all handled it, and burning their fingers, as Bo-bo and his father had done before them, and nature prompting to each of them the same remedy, against the face of all the facts, and the clearest charge which judge had ever given,—to the surprise of the whole court, townsfolk, strangers, reporters, and all present—without leaving the box, or any manner of consultation whatever, they brought in a simultaneous verdict of Not Guilty.

The judge, who was a shrewd fellow, winked at the manifest iniquity of the decision: and, when the court was dismissed, went privily, and bought up all the pigs that could be had for love or money. In a few days his Lordship’s town house was observed to be on fire. The thing took wing, and now there was nothing to be seen but fires in every direction. Fuel and pigs grew enormously dear all over the district. The insurance offices one and all shut up shop. People built slighter and slighter every day, until it was feared that the very science of architecture would in no long time be lost to the world. Thus this custom of firing houses continued, till in process of time, says my manuscript, a sage arose, like our Locke, who made a discovery, that the flesh of swine, or indeed of any other animal, might be cooked ( burnt , as they called it) without the necessity of consuming a whole house to dress it. Then first began the rude form of a gridiron. Roasting by the string, or spit, came in a century or two later, I forget in whose dynasty. By such slow degrees, concludes the manuscript, do the most useful, and seemingly the most obvious arts, make their way among mankind.—

Without placing too implicit faith in the account above given, it must be agreed, that if a worthy pretext for so dangerous an experiment as setting houses on fire (especially in these days) could be assigned in favour of any culinary object, that pretext and excuse might be found in ROAST PIG.

Of all the delicacies in the whole mundus edibilis , I will maintain it to be the most delicate— princeps obsoniorum .

I speak not of your grown porkers—things between pig and pork—those hobbydehoys—but a young and tender suckling—under a moon old—guiltless as yet of the sty—with no original speck of the amor immunditiæ , the hereditary failing of the first parent, yet manifest—his voice as yet not broken, but something between a childish treble, and a grumble—the mild forerunner, or præludium , of a grunt.

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 flavour 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—O 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 equably 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 had 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 manner of 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, while his stomach half rejecteth, 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.

He is the best of Sapors. Pine-apple is great. She is indeed almost too transcendent—a delight, if not sinful, yet so like to sinning, that really a tender-conscienced person would do well to pause—too ravishing for mortal taste, she woundeth and excoriateth the lips that approach her—like lovers’ kisses, she biteth—she is a pleasure bordering on pain from the fierceness and insanity of her relish—but she stoppeth at the palate—she meddleth not with the appetite—and the coarsest hunger might barter her consistently for a mutton chop.

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 extend, all around. He is the least envious of banquets. He is all neighbours’ fare.

I am one of those, who freely and ungrudgingly impart a share of the good things of this life which fall to their lot (few as mine are in this kind) to a friend. I protest I take as great an interest in my friend’s pleasures, his relishes, and proper satisfactions, as in mine own. “Presents,” I often say, “endear Absents.” Hares, pheasants, partridges, snipes, barn-door chicken (those “tame villatic fowl”), capons, plovers, brawn, barrels of oysters, I dispense as freely as I receive them. I love to taste them, as it were, upon the tongue of my friend. But a stop must be put somewhere. One would not, like Lear, “give every thing.” I make my stand upon pig. Methinks it is an ingratitude to the Giver of all good flavours, to extra-domiciliate, or send out of the house, slightingly, (under pretext of friendship, or I know not what) a blessing so particularly adapted, predestined, I may say, to my individual palate—It argues an insensibility.

I remember a touch of conscience in this kind at school. My good old aunt, who never parted from me at the end of a holiday without stuffing a sweet-meat, or some nice thing, into my pocket, had dismissed me one evening with a smoking plum-cake, fresh from the oven. In my way to school (it was over London bridge) a grey-headed old beggar saluted me (I have no doubt at this time of day that he was a counterfeit). I had no pence to console him with, and in the vanity of self-denial, and the very coxcombry of charity, school-boy-like, I made him a present of—the whole cake! I walked on a little, buoyed up, as one is on such occasions, with a sweet soothing of self-satisfaction; but before I had got to the end of the bridge, my better feelings returned, and I burst into tears, thinking how ungrateful I had been to my good aunt, to go and give her good gift away to a stranger, that I had never seen before, and who might be a bad man for aught I knew; and then I thought of the pleasure my aunt would be taking in thinking that I—I myself, and not another—would eat her nice cake—and what should I say to her the next time I saw her—how naughty I was to part with her pretty present—and the odour of that spicy cake came back upon my recollection, and the pleasure and the curiosity I had taken in seeing her make it, and her joy when she sent it to the oven, and how disappointed she would feel that I had never had a bit of it in my mouth at last—and I blamed my impertinent spirit of alms-giving, and out-of-place hypocrisy of goodness, and above all I wished never to see the face again of that insidious, good-for-nothing, old grey impostor.

Our ancestors were nice in their method of sacrificing these tender victims. We read of pigs whipt to death with something of a shock, as we hear of any other obsolete custom. The age of discipline is gone by, or it would be curious to inquire (in a philosophical light merely) what effect this process might have towards intenerating and dulcifying a substance, naturally so mild and dulcet as the flesh of young, pigs. It looks like refining a violet. Yet we should be cautious, while we condemn the inhumanity, how we censure the wisdom of the practice. It might impart a gusto—

I remember an hypothesis, argued upon by the young students, when I was at St. Omer’s, and maintained with much learning and pleasantry on both sides, “Whether, supposing that the flavour of a pig who obtained his death by whipping ( per flagellationem extremam ) superadded a pleasure upon the palate of a man more intense than any possible suffering we can conceive in the animal, is man justified in using that method of putting the animal to death?” I forget the decision.

His sauce should be considered. Decidedly, a few bread crums, done up with his liver and brains, and a dash of mild sage. But, banish, dear Mrs. Cook, I beseech you, the whole onion tribe. Barbecue your whole hogs to your palate, steep them in shalots, stuff them out with plantations of the rank and guilty garlic; you cannot poison them, or make them stronger than they are—but consider, he is a weakling—a flower.

MLA Citation

Lamb, Charles. “A dissertation upon roast pig.” 1823. Quotidiana. Ed. Patrick Madden. 2 Dec 2007. 19 May 2024 <http://essays.quotidiana.org/lamb/dissertation_upon_roast_pig/>.

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• Charles Lamb: Essays Summary

In his Essays of Elia and its sequel, Last Essays of Elia , Charles Lamb explores a broad range of topics and works with various non-fiction tropes that often edge into the terrain of fiction. We see him writing obituaries, dream journals, diatribes, and tributes. What unifies Lamb's essays is his lyrical, conversational writing style. Like many fellow Romantics, he often employs purple prose and shows off his sharp wit, but the essays themselves remain accessible and often fun. Elia is the persona Lamb uses when writing essays, so instead of referring to Lamb or "the narrator," these synopses will refer simply to "Elia."

"Old China"

Elia details his pet obsession, old china. The essay starts with—typical for Elia—a flight of fancy, as he gets lost in a scene of a tea ceremony depicted on a cup. The essay veers into a conversation with Cousin Bridget about whether the days when they were poorer were more fulfilling than those of their comparative wealth.

"Dream-Children; A Reverie"

Much of this essay reads as Elia's elegy to his grandmother, Field , the magnanimous, fearless woman who took care of a mansion where Elia spent much of his childhood. He recounts Field as well as his late brother John to his children, but when Elia begins to tell the children about their mother Alice , they fade away, and Elia wakes up from a dream. He never had any children by Alice, since Alice chose to marry another man.

"A Dissertation Upon Roast Pig"

A comical essay which includes many nuggets of fiction, "A Dissertation" is Elia's attempt to imagine the provenance of people eating roast pork, a dish that he loves. He talks about an imaginary ancient boy who burns down his family's shack but eats the pig that died in the fire and loves it. The essay veers into a discussion of Elia's love of sharing food with other people, before ending with a moral conundrum of how animals that are to be eaten should be slaughtered.

"The South-Sea House"

Elia describes the bank where he used to work, the South Sea House, which was the site of a famous financial speculation hoax. He recounts his various co-workers as well as the owners of the bank, but eventually reveals that his account may be as much of a hoax as the scam that the bank infamously ran.

"Ellistoniana"

Elia writes an obituary for his friend Elliston , a beloved stage actor whose on-stage and off-stage presences were indistinguishable from one another. Elliston is described as a passionate man whose only regrets are that he was pigeonholed late in his career for doing what he did best.

"Rejoicings Upon a New Year's Coming of Age"

This is a fanciful essay which is effectively a work of fiction imagining a New Year's Day party where all of the days of the year are personified and mingle with one another. April Fool's is the master of ceremonies and creates delightful chaos throughout the celebration.

"Detached Thoughts on Books and Reading"

In this essay, Elia talks about his compulsive reading habit, praising his favorites, Shakespeare and Milton, while confessing that he'll read just about anything with text that is put in front of him. He rails against newspapers and especially the practice of reading them out loud in public settings, as this violates that individualistic style of reading that Elia favors.

"Grace Before Meat"

Elia is typically skeptical of hypocrisy in organized religion, but this is really the essay where he outlines the substance of his critique by way of articulating his own religious and moral convictions. He believe that grace is usually uttered insincerely, and that only the poor really have dignity in saying it, as they are truly grateful for the opportunity to have food on their table. This extends to a broader condemnation of the rich.

"The Old and New Schoolmaster"

Elia talks about the limits of his education based on the old style of pedagogy, which was wholly rooted in learning English and literature pertinent to it. The new schoolmasters know a little bit about everything so that their pupils' curiosity can always be satisfied. The essay ends with a letter from a schoolmaster about how alienated he feels from his students after the passing of his wife.

"The Praise of Chimney-Sweepers"

In an essay that is somewhat uncomfortable to read because of its treatment of race, Elia praises young boys who are chimney sweepers. He praises the tea they drink and their jovial attitude, before describing dinners that his late friend used to throw for the boys every year where they were treated like nobility. As with many of Elia's essays, this one elevates the nobility of the lower classes.

Charles Lamb: Essays Questions and Answers

The Question and Answer section for Charles Lamb: Essays is a great resource to ask questions, find answers, and discuss the novel.

Which quality Charles Lamb a romantic writer?

As a Romantic, Lamb brought a key innovation to the somewhat new form, inserting his own personally to give the essays a conversational tone. His essays showcase his passions and anxieties, imbuing the non-fiction form with a personal and literary...

What is the major theme of "Poor Relation" by Charles Lamb?

The major theme is that of the "poor relation"... their irrelevance and unpleasant place in one's life.

Explain the theme of the essay ''A Dissertation upon Roast Pig''.

The essay describes the discovery of the exquisite flavour of roast pig in China in a time when all food was eaten raw. This is really a light hearted theme speaking to how odd it is that humans eat cooked animals at all.

Study Guide for Charles Lamb: Essays

Charles Lamb: Essays study guide contains a biography of Charles Lamb, literature essays, quiz questions, major themes, characters, and a full summary and analysis.

• About Charles Lamb: Essays
• Character List

Essays for Charles Lamb: Essays

Charles Lamb: Essays essays are academic essays for citation. These papers were written primarily by students and provide critical analysis of Charles Lamb: Essays by Charles Lamb.

• Charles Lamb and Spaces Separate from Rationality

Wikipedia Entries for Charles Lamb: Essays

• Introduction
• Youth and schooling
• Family tragedy
• Religious views

Satiric models for Charles Lamb's "a dissertation upon roast pig"

Research output : Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

Though hitherto overlooked in social histories of cookery, Charles Lamb's essay approaches its subject through the new literary-culinary writing that appeared with European romanticism. Although Lamb's persona, Elia, never hesitates to express everywhere his idiosyncratic likes and dislikes, in "Roast Pig" he passes beyond eccentricity to become a morally transgressive figure. Lamb's implicit swipe at the vegetarians and his borrowings from modern and classical sources, such as Swift's "Modest Proposal" and the recipes or scenes in Apicius and Petronius, suggest that he undoubtedly expected his readers to recognize the false notes of excess, vanity, and even infant cannibalism revealed by Elia's appetite. The Latin satura-ae denotes a mélange, either literally a dish of various ingredients or, etymologically, the Roman invention of the satiric genre itself, that loose mixing of a variety of literary types. Fittingly, the pig-platters of Trimalchio and Elia thus turn back upon both the festival of the Saturnalia and, under the aegis of Saturn's misrule, upon the zeugmatic nature of satire itself. Elia's final reference to his schooldays at St. Omer's actually ties his gluttony to Guy Fawkes' scheme of exploding king, lords, and commons. By bursting pretensions and snobbery, Lamb's essay thus self-reflexively presents itself as a figurative equivalent to the "superhuman plot" of Fawkes.

ASJC Scopus subject areas

• General Arts and Humanities

Other files and links

• Link to publication in Scopus

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• Guy Fawkes Arts & Humanities 100%
• Pig Arts & Humanities 59%
• Cannibalism Arts & Humanities 47%
• Saturnalia Arts & Humanities 46%
• Snobbery Arts & Humanities 43%
• Misrule Arts & Humanities 43%
• Gluttony Arts & Humanities 43%
• Social History Arts & Humanities 41%

T1 - Satiric models for Charles Lamb's "a dissertation upon roast pig"

AU - Monsman, Gerald

N2 - Though hitherto overlooked in social histories of cookery, Charles Lamb's essay approaches its subject through the new literary-culinary writing that appeared with European romanticism. Although Lamb's persona, Elia, never hesitates to express everywhere his idiosyncratic likes and dislikes, in "Roast Pig" he passes beyond eccentricity to become a morally transgressive figure. Lamb's implicit swipe at the vegetarians and his borrowings from modern and classical sources, such as Swift's "Modest Proposal" and the recipes or scenes in Apicius and Petronius, suggest that he undoubtedly expected his readers to recognize the false notes of excess, vanity, and even infant cannibalism revealed by Elia's appetite. The Latin satura-ae denotes a mélange, either literally a dish of various ingredients or, etymologically, the Roman invention of the satiric genre itself, that loose mixing of a variety of literary types. Fittingly, the pig-platters of Trimalchio and Elia thus turn back upon both the festival of the Saturnalia and, under the aegis of Saturn's misrule, upon the zeugmatic nature of satire itself. Elia's final reference to his schooldays at St. Omer's actually ties his gluttony to Guy Fawkes' scheme of exploding king, lords, and commons. By bursting pretensions and snobbery, Lamb's essay thus self-reflexively presents itself as a figurative equivalent to the "superhuman plot" of Fawkes.

AB - Though hitherto overlooked in social histories of cookery, Charles Lamb's essay approaches its subject through the new literary-culinary writing that appeared with European romanticism. Although Lamb's persona, Elia, never hesitates to express everywhere his idiosyncratic likes and dislikes, in "Roast Pig" he passes beyond eccentricity to become a morally transgressive figure. Lamb's implicit swipe at the vegetarians and his borrowings from modern and classical sources, such as Swift's "Modest Proposal" and the recipes or scenes in Apicius and Petronius, suggest that he undoubtedly expected his readers to recognize the false notes of excess, vanity, and even infant cannibalism revealed by Elia's appetite. The Latin satura-ae denotes a mélange, either literally a dish of various ingredients or, etymologically, the Roman invention of the satiric genre itself, that loose mixing of a variety of literary types. Fittingly, the pig-platters of Trimalchio and Elia thus turn back upon both the festival of the Saturnalia and, under the aegis of Saturn's misrule, upon the zeugmatic nature of satire itself. Elia's final reference to his schooldays at St. Omer's actually ties his gluttony to Guy Fawkes' scheme of exploding king, lords, and commons. By bursting pretensions and snobbery, Lamb's essay thus self-reflexively presents itself as a figurative equivalent to the "superhuman plot" of Fawkes.

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=61149256420&partnerID=8YFLogxK

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=61149256420&partnerID=8YFLogxK

M3 - Article

AN - SCOPUS:61149256420

SN - 1052-0406

SP - 1-27+215

JO - Nineteenth Century Prose

JF - Nineteenth Century Prose

GetSetNotes

Charles Lamb Dissertation Upon a Roast Pig Summary

The essay tells the story of how the art of roasting meat was accidentally discovered. In ancient times, mankind ate their meat raw, but a Chinese manuscript suggests that a golden age known as the Cooks’ holiday marked the transition to cooking meat. The story revolves around a swineherd named Ho-ti and his son Bo-bo.

One day, Bo-bo accidentally sets his cottage on fire, along with a litter of new-farrowed pigs. As the fire burns, Bo-bo discovers the delicious taste of the burnt pig’s skin and flesh. He indulges in eating it, despite his father’s anger. Eventually, both father and son enjoy the burnt pig together. They are warned not to reveal their secret, as their neighbors would consider it abominable.

However, fires continue to break out in Ho-ti’s cottage, and the mystery is discovered. Father and son are summoned to trial, where the burnt pig is presented as evidence. Surprisingly, the jury members, after burning their fingers on the pig, declare the culprits not guilty without any consultation.

The judge buys up all the pigs in the area after a court decision, causing a shortage and increasing prices. Fires break out in the town, leading to the closure of insurance offices and a decline in architecture.

A sage discovers a way to cook pig without burning down houses, leading to the invention of the gridiron and later roasting by string or spit. The narrator argues that roast pig, particularly young and tender suckling pig, is the most delicious delicacy.

The narrator describes the unique qualities of roast pig, including the crisp crackling and the combination of fat and lean meat. The narrator praises the taste and versatility of pig, stating that it satisfies both the strong and weak appetites. The narrator expresses a willingness to share other food with friends but draws the line at giving away pig, considering it a personal blessing.

The narrator recalls an incident from his childhood where the gave away a plum-cake his aunt had given him to a beggar. He initially felt proud of his act of charity but later regretted it, realizing he had been ungrateful to his aunt. The narrator reflects on the pleasure his aunt would have felt if he had enjoyed the cake himself, and he feels guilty for his impulsive act of giving it away.

The essay then shifts to discussing the sacrifice of young pigs in the past and questions the wisdom of the practice. It ponders whether the method of whipping the pigs before their death could have enhanced the flavor of the meat, and whether it justifies the inhumane treatment.

The essay mentions a debate among young students about whether the intense pleasure a man might experience from eating a pig subjected to whipping justifies using that method to kill the animal. The outcome of the debate is forgotten. The essay concludes by suggesting a sauce for the pig, emphasizing the exclusion of onions and the use of mild sage. It also describes the pig as a delicate and fragile creature.

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