Adventures of a Bacon Curer, by Maynard Davies
Many thanks to Ari Weinzweig and his Guide to Better Bacon for championing this book. I had heard of it before, and looked it up, but (like Ari initially) took one look at the two-color cover, saw recipes still calling for saltpeter, and dismissed it as irrelevant, as hopelessly out of date. What a mistake!
While, as Ari points out, the story of his life would hardly qualify as “adventures” by TV standards, with food programming that’s more about adventures, risk-taking, and thrills than about real food, I found the book hard to put down once I started. Maynard’s account of his life reminded me of an interview that I was fortunate enough to have a few years back with the master cabintetmaker James Krenov. After talking about the “studio furniture” scene, which was full of arty pretensions and more flash than substance, James Krenov said that his main hope for his life’s work – his furniture, his books, his teaching – was that it would help to make more of a place for “quiet work,” work that didn’t need to scream or shout. Maynard’s is just such a quiet book, all about hard work, work well done, and the peace and contentment they bring.
And he certainly had experiences that were adventures to him!
My favorite occurs when, as lad in his twenties, he comes to work at a modern factory that makes confectionery as well as sausages. At the end of the day, the guys in his department had to wheel cartloads of their “sausages” through this section, which was all staffed by what he calls “very experienced ladies and I do mean experienced ladies!” Running the gauntlet through these laughing, jeering, and joking women “was quite frightening really,” so the men would try to stick together and race through. The one time Maynard became separated from the herd, he was jumped by half a dozen women who pinned him to the ground while others whipped down his pants and filled his shorts with a gallon of whipped cream. Talk about creaming your shorts! Maynard’s laconic remark is, “I made sure I never went through that department again on my own!”
This account is so interesting to me because, as “the last apprentice” at a traditional business that bought its own pigs, slaughtered them, and converted them into bacons, hams, sausages, and pies, Maynard has lived through a period of major change. As he writes, “It was the end of an era in the food industry around 1960, because after three or four years it was never produced like this again. This was the original method, which went back about two hundred years or more.” When the owner of this business is ready to retire and sells out to a modern operation, Maynard finds that everything is different: “Theo put the quality of food before the profit but our new employers had turned it all upside down; the profit came first and standards came later, all that mattered was how much production we could get out and how quickly we could do it.” In this brave new world of “speed and greed,” one of the things they would do is use the bone dust that collected in their meat-cutting bandsaw as a filler in their sausages!
As someone raised in a working-class culture epitomized by his opening chapter, “Hard Work and Early Mornings,” Maynard never glamorizes his life. He has done his best to keep up the skills and traditional knowledge that were passed on to him, and the craft of “a traditional bacon curer,” as he repeatedly stresses, is a lot of hard work for just a little pay. All this is quite a refreshing change from the foodie hype that has once-respectable newspapers fawning over butchers as the new rock stars. Maynard, in contrast, is not some “boutique” bacon-maker, and the word “artisan” never passes his lips.
As Ari says, what shines through this book is a wonderfully humane intelligence, simply brought to bear on the task at hand, that leaves the world a little better for his work and his words. We should all do so well.
October 21st, 2009 at 9:19 am
He’s recently published his recipes – it’s a great reference book – the levels of cure of course need adjusting to current usages but it’s still a great read.
October 22nd, 2009 at 7:35 am
Wheels, I did see that his latest book, Manual of a Traditional Bacon Curer, has just come out and is available in the US! But while it sells for 16£ on your side of the pond, the price here is $40. Hullo, did the exchange rates just go crazy?
While I’ll have to wait for the price to come down, I’m very glad to see that he’s written a book specifically to pass on the meat curing knowledge that he inherited, even if the recipes need a little reworking, in light of current regulations about nitrate levels, etc.
October 22nd, 2009 at 2:08 pm
It amkes a change for something to be cheaper in the UK. It’s not known as rip-off Britain for nothing!
October 23rd, 2009 at 6:16 am
Just received his second book, Secrets of a Bacon Curer, which they sent all the way from England for the reasonable price of $15, and I’m ready to tuck into that!
October 23rd, 2009 at 9:16 am
I enjoyed reading both his autobiographical books. Of course many of the places he lived and worked are not far from where I live.
December 19th, 2009 at 3:16 am
I love these books, particularly immpressed with the way he dealt with the rude car dealer!
December 20th, 2009 at 10:29 am
That was a funny story, particularly when the same guy shows up years later, to buy a truck from the factory where Maynard is foreman, and Maynard introduces himself and explains how they know each other before telling him, in the nicest possible way, to “f___ off!” Maynard’s an interesting person, clearly quiet and easy-going most of the time and trusting – too trusting, given all the stories he tells about being taken in! – but when someone treats him shabbily, he doesn’t forget.
The story that sticks in my mind is when their stove goes out on a weekend, and he tries to get someone to deliver a new one right away. The guy won’t deliver it until days later, and then tacks on all kinds of extra fees – for bringing it into the kitchen and connecting it, for hauling away the old one, etc. Maynard pays all these fees, but when the guy then asks to use his phone, Maynard tells him he may, but, since he hasn’t given anything away himself, Maynard will have to charge him something like a hundred pounds for the use of the phone!