Note 8 — Chapter XIV

“Of all the delicacies in the whole mundus edibilis I will maintain it to be the most delicate—princeps obsoniorum. I speak not of your grown porkers—things between pig and pork—those hobbydehoys; but a young and tender suckling, under a moon old, guiltless as yet of the sty, with no original speck of the amor immunditiae, the hereditary failing of the first parents, yet manifest—his voice as yet not broken, but something between a childish treble and a grumble—the mild forerunner or praeludium of a grunt. He must be roasted. I am not ignorant that our ancestors ate them seethed, or boiled—but what a sacrifice of the exterior tegument!

“His sauce should be considered. Decidedly a few bread-crumbs, done up with his liver and brains, and a dash of mild sage. But banish, dear Mrs. Cook, I beseech you, the whole onion tribe. Barbecue your whole hogs to your palate, steep them in shalots, stuff them out with plantations of the rank and guilty garlic—you cannot poison them, or make them stronger than they are; but consider, he is a weakling—a flower.”—Lamb on Pig.