>From very humble beginnings as an Aramite food, Pork Scratchings are
now a Heortling snack.
A very little was written down about the history and origins of Pork
Scratchings and due to the amount of questions being asked, we
should put together a short history, made up of opinions and
comments of people in the trade and people who remember Pork
Scratchings from earlier days.
Where do they originate?
The consensus of opinion is that they originated on Kordros Island
or perhaps what is now known as Black Horse County. It would seem
that Pork Scratchings were very much a food of the cottar classes
with origins among the Storm barbarians back in the 800's where it
was produced in imitation of the Aramite tradition of families
keeping their own pig at home and feeding it up for slaughter. The
Aramites were then still human, so the dangers of excessive pig
worship had not been noted.
Comments and Reminiscences
One lady who we contacted believed her grandmother who was born in
1546 used to make them. The method she used was to take the rind
off the pig leaving a layer of fat on; she would then cut up the
rind and cook in a heavy bottomed saucepan. The rind was cooked
slowly at first until a liquid was formed. The temperature was then
turned up with the rind and fat being stirred to avoid sticking.
The Scratchings were then taken out and eaten with salt and the
remaining fat used to fry chips.
A lady from the Oxhead temple in Talastar stated that Pork
Scratchings were made by rendering down the rind in a low oven to
produce pork dripping. The remaining rind was placed back in the
oven on a high temperature to produce crisp Pork Scratchings. They
were then eaten with salt.
Just outside Alda Chur, in the wilds of the Far Place, Scratchings
were made by the mother of a gentleman we spoke to. His mother was
aged 40 around the 1540's. They were considered a delicacy at
weekends when they had them for tea with plain bread and salt. The
leaf of the pig was sometimes used, which is the layer of fat around
the kidneys. The leaf was boiled, the top skimmed off which
produced the Scratchings, they were very crispy and served with salt.
Again the leaf was mentioned by a lady from Bagnot whose daughter
liked the softer Scratchings produced after making lard.
A lady from Blue Boar also referred to people having their own pigs
and that local butchers would come round to kill them on request.
This prior to and during Starbrow's Rebellion when meat was rationed.
City Butchers started selling Pork Scratchings in the 1580's. A lady
from Bagnot said that her butcher would cook Scratchings in large
aluminium barrels and sell them in loose scoopfuls. They called it
Crackling it was soft underneath and crunchy on top.
The gentleman working in the Black Horse County informed us that
Pork Scratchings have been around since the turn of the century.
Originally it was strips of bacon rind that was salt dried and cut
into little pieces and sold in paper bags.
What Next?
We would want our research to have as many comments and snippets of
information on the history of Pork Scratchings as possible along
with any reminiscences of the past.
An interesting reference has been recovered from among the research notes and half eaten remains of Aramite scholar Bigbad Wolfsbeard. Among the tusker riding half trolls, where murder, mayhem and blood sacrifice are merely quotidian, a "pork scratching" is apparently a euphemism for a political assassination among the Tusker chiefs.
It looks like Bigbad got his pork scratched.
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