Taste of Life: No competition among farmers to sell cured meat because of religious sentiments, beliefs
Almost no efforts were made by the British to educate and train farmers in India in the art of curing meat since they were aware of their religious sentiments and the beliefs
Pune: In last week’s column, I wrote about an old booklet titled “Meat Curing in the Presidencies” written by “an agriculturist in Chittoor”. It was self-published in Poona in 1890. The author arrived in India from the US in 1872 and lived in Bombay (Mumbai), Chittoor, Madras (Chennai), and Poona (Pune). He wrote the booklet while living in Poona from 1882 to 88. The booklet was meant to guide the farmers, Indian and European, in preserving meat.
In the absence of refrigerators and cold storage, cold smoking and salt curing were used to preserve fish and meat. Hogs were slaughtered in winter and hams and other pork products were salted and hung up or placed on a shelf to last the following summer.
In America, salted meat (and particularly salted pork) had been essential in the diet of European-Americans since colonial times. The cultivation of corn and the husbandry of swine made up a principal sequence in rural life and agricultural economics across the upland South and Midwest. Before the twentieth century, two basic ways of salting large chunks of pork (ham, bacon, shoulder) were used – the brine method (most widespread in the North) and the dry salting method, which was extensive in the South.
Nineteenth-century agricultural policies in the US encouraged the farmer to adopt home-curing of meats. The farmer was not only supposed to cure meat, but he was expected to sell it too. The author of the booklet envisioned the farmer in India as a “businessman” – he was expected to combine business talent with increased knowledge of how to produce, study his “own special situation” concerning markets and seek to produce along lines in which remunerative prices could be obtained.
The author emphasised that Indian and European farmers in the Presidencies should inquire more closely into the wants of local markets and try to meet their requirements. The “local markets” that the author mentioned were the ones patronised by the British Army and the European civilians. It was true that the mofussil depended upon large Indian cities and Europe for good quality processed meat. While the author expected that nearby farmers should supply cured meat to towns and cities, he ignored the fact that agricultural practices in India were linked to religion and caste and that slaughtering animals for meat and curing beef and pork were not practised by a large section of farmers. The cattle were employed on farms and for milk, and farmers sold them to butchers.
According to the author, butchers in Poona offered a low price for cattle and hence, he expected the farmer to process the meat himself. He noted how the modern American farmer was trying to earn more and become self-sufficient at the same time - he cured the meat for the local market and received almost double the amount in cash. He had the sausage, tenderloin, spare ribs backbones, pigs’ feet, heads, and a considerable quantity of lard left to pay for the labour of curing. He repeated the experience for a few years and made his business even more profitable.
In 1886, the author met a European farmer from Manjri near Poona who told the author that any farmer “who shaped his affairs to supply a superior article of hams, bacon, and sausage, would build up a paying business, and one which might become more popular and profitable year by year”. The customers who demanded “gilt-edge” butter were looking for “gilt-edge” hams and bacon as well. Curing meat was linked to connoisseurship in Europe and America.. There was no danger of the demand failing once such trade was established.
At the Manjri farm, the hogs were slaughtered and after the meat cooled, it was cut up. The pieces were rubbed with salt well, especially where their shank was sawed off. Barrels were placed where the pork would not freeze on the one hand, nor be too warm on the other. The bottom was covered with salt, and in this were packed the hams and shoulders with enough of the side meat to make it compact, sprinkling salt on each layer, and when it was all packed, an old barrel was put on the top on which was placed a heavy weight. In the course of three or four days, brine was made by stirring in water all the salt it would absorb. It was then poured over the meat and made to remain for about six weeks. The meat was lifted out and hung up and permitted to drip for a few days, after which it was smoked brown and put away for future use.
The smoking was done in a smokehouse. A smokehouse, or smokery as it was known in Britain, was a building where meat and fish were cured with smoke. It was also used to store meat. Smokehouses were uncommon in and around Poona and the author suggested some methods to give the meat the proper curing. A barrel, or two barrels, one set on top of the other, made a very good place for smoking a summer quantity of meat. The meat was hung in the upper one and the smoke was made in the lower one. It was advised that the barrels should not be allowed to get too hot.
Green hickory, hickory bark, maple chips, dampened corn cobs and the like were considered to make good fuel for the smokehouse. The French were known to use damp wheat straw and that is what was used in Poona. The booklet suggested that hardwood sawdust could be used in the Bombay Presidency. It had the advantage of never making a blaze, something that was to be avoided in all smoking of meats. When sawdust was used, a large iron kettle was often employed in which to make the fire. November was also the month of agricultural fairs in Poona and winter wheat was sold at the venue. The wheat straw was used at the Manjri farm.
After curing, each ham was wrapped with plenty of paper and then bags were made from old flour sacks, and these were whitewashed. Yellow ochre was sometimes put in the whitewash to make the sacking appear just like meats that were imported from Europe. The whitewash did not preserve the meat, but did prevent flies from depositing eggs on it through the thin sacking.
Appearance contributed a great deal to the value of hams and bacon. The meat was expected to be clean and presentable. For the best breakfast bacon, the thinnest and leanest sides were used, and a little sugar and saltpetre were put in the brine. “If pork is intended for sides of bacon, it must be cut differently from what it should be for rolled or spiced meat; and the hams must be cut in a shapely and marketable form – not simply big junks of salt pig, called ‘hams’ just because cut from that part of a pig where the ham generally comes from”, the booklet said.
The farmer who attempted this venture was expected to know how to trim, cure, and handle, wisely select his times and seasons, select his stock so that it would make the kind of product for which a good price could be obtained, feed it as it ought to be fed to secure flavour and quality that would command a fancy sum, and make a better product than anybody else; in other words, learn how to do the work from start to finish a little better than anybody else.
However, there simply was not any competition among Indian, and even European, farmers to sell cured meat. The British after having established a separate department dedicated to agriculture undertook various experiments at farms set up in places like Poona and Saharanpur. But almost no efforts were made to educate and train native farmers in the art of curing meat since they were aware of their religious sentiments and the beliefs associated with purity and cleanliness. Some animals were considered holy, others were “dirty”.
While the impact of the colonial rule on Indian foodways has been studied in detail, there is little documentation of American influence on Indian food habits apart from the Columbian Exchange. Examining it will enrich the knowledge about the customary ways of dealing with generation, harvest, preservation, preparation, and consumption of food.
Chinmay Damle is a research scientist and food enthusiast. He writes here on Pune’s food culture. He can be contacted at chinmay.damle@gmail.com