The Bacon Book: Irresistible, mouthwatering recipes!. Christopher Sjuve

as a supplier, and when Germany started to impose tariffs, eventually banning the import of live pigs entirely, the Danes found themselves with 300,000 pigs and nobody to buy them. The animals ultimately ended up in England and thus began a long-lasting trade agreement that further bolstered the production of bacon in Wiltshire and elsewhere in England.

      «The Harris family will nonetheless always hold a special place in the history of modern bacon.»

      Other producers could build their own icehouses by licensing the design from the Harrises, creating a major new source of income for the family, which they used to further expand and mechanise their facilities. The rate of growth was astonishing – John and Henry’s mother would have considered it a good week if she could slaughter as many as five or six pigs and still manage to sell all the carcasses by Saturday, but by 1879 her sons’ facilities were processing more than 1,000 pigs a week.

      The brothers operated two separate companies for much of the 19th century, but the bonds of family remained tight and in 1888 they consolidated into one large company. They exported bacon to most of Europe, the USA, Australia, India, China and New Zealand, even supplying the steamships that were by now regularly crisscrossing the Atlantic and Pacific oceans.

      The company eventually outgrew its humble origins, through buy-outs and steady expansion, and by 1920 ownership was entirely out of the hands of the original Harris family. The Harris family will nonetheless always hold a special place in the history of modern bacon. The extent of their legacy is debatable, as for most major, ground-breaking companies, but it can be convincingly argued that their efforts played a key role in establishing bacon as an iconic product for the modern age.

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COLUMBUS’S PIGS:

       The first pigs in

       AMERICA

      ‘OK, CHRISTOPHER, YOU need to take these pigs with you.’

      ‘But …’

      ‘You aren’t listening. I’m the one paying for the voyage. And I assure you, you won’t regret it.’

      Picture the scene. Christopher Columbus is preparing for his second expedition to the New World, and Queen Isabel of Spain is determined to have her way. She was, after all, a practical woman. From her perspective, his previous voyage had not been a success – after all, he had never made it to India. But the new territories could still be colonised, which soon became policy.

      This was why a full flotilla of 17 ships ended up packed with 1,000 people, horses and cows. Alongside them were the first eight pigs to set trotter in the New World. Apparently, it was the Queen herself who insisted that Columbus take pigs with him across the Atlantic.

      The pigs reached solid ground in November 1493. The idea was that they would multiply, making future expeditions easier by ensuring a steady supply of meat in the New World. The Spaniards had big plans for the future. We know that Columbus picked the eight pigs up on La Gomera, in the Canary Islands, before setting off and that the cargo included both wild and domesticated pigs. They had no problems surviving the voyage, which was far and away the longest any pig had ever undertaken. There were no pigs in America before Columbus – these were the first. There were other hooved animals, called peccaries, javelina, or skunk pigs, that closely resembled pigs, but with a few differences.

      PHOTO: THINKSTOCK.COM

      «It’s worth pointing out the striking coincidence that Cortés, de León and de Soto all hailed from the Extremadura region of western Spain and all three had grown up around pigs.»

      The imported pigs eventually established a wild population in the West Indies, roaming through the jungles eating everything they came across. They turned out to be well suited to the new environment and thrived on this new, strange fauna. Columbus’s pigs would leave their mark on the history of pigs in America. They proved highly adaptable and soon enough there were so many that it started to become a problem. In the years to come the Spanish conquistadors would have their hands full keeping the porcine population in check. It was bad enough that they grazed on the colonists’ corn and sugarcane crops, but from time to time they would attack cows and even people when they felt threatened.

      More than 40 years later, in 1539, Hernando de Soto launched the first European expedition into the American mainland. His cargo included 2,500 ‘shoulders of bacon’, as well as an unspecified number of live pigs. Some sources mention as many as 200 pigs, while others claim there were as few as 13 sows and two boars. It’s similarly uncertain where he obtained the pigs, but some sources maintain that he bought them in Cuba from another conquistador, Ponce de León.

      Where had de León got them from, then? It seems likely that they were descendants of the small herd Columbus had brought with him, which may have bred with other pigs that undertook the same voyage later on, but historians aren’t certain. Another hypothesis is that de León had brought his own pigs on an expedition to Florida 18 years earlier, but there’s no concrete evidence to support this.