[Sca-cooks] Speck

[Susanne Mayer]

>
> I was looking at the 1590 inventory of a German widow, and it lists 7
> sides of 'speck' and one piece in the kitchen.  I'm assuming these are
> sides of bacon/pork.  It came to my mind that I really have no idea what a
> side of bacon looks like as I mostly buy bacon in that grocery store
> packaging.  At any rate, it seems that 7 sides of speck would imply that
> the meat is somehow preserved (salted/smoked?)  How much meat would there
> be in a "side" on average?
>
> Katherine
>
A side of Speck ( use THIS: speckseite, as search topic for pictures in 
Goggle ) is  a whole piece of the thing, and if it is from the belly side, 
you get two out of one pig,

Here's the German wiki page
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speck

and the English page

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bacon

Both give you a good, but a bit different overview over the theme. A whole 
side of bacon does go up in to the kilogram range quite easily, as it 
depends on the size of the pig slaughtered and the part used. You will 
probably try to find period painting of a sausag emaker, butcher, etc to see 
the sides hanging in the chimney and then compare to modern pictures, but 
the sides mentioned in the book where probably bell (bacon rashers 
compatible, but salted and smoked) and back, as almost all better parts 
where used for eating directly and the parts like head and feet for sausage 
meat, or also for itself.


http://www.handltyrol.at/xxl/_lang/en/index.html


This is the page of one of the most famous commercial producers in Austria 
in English, with lots of pictures of all the modern versions .

Regards

Katherina

>> From: K C Francis <katiracook at hotmail.com>
> >
> I can get speck at my local Whole Foods.  I have it sliced very thin and 
> serve as part of a cold plate.  I have also purchased it at AG Ferrari 
> Foods for the same purpose.  It looks very like prosciutto.    Check out 
> Google using images.
>
> Katira
>