72 MEALS MEDICINAL. 
among them than among the general population of our 
country. 
Lard is the fat of pork melted down, and sold in bladders, or 
tubs; the lower the heat at which it is melted, the smoother and 
less granular it is. Usually water is mixed with it in melting, and 
often much water is left commingled. The French word “ lard” 
signifies in the first place bacon, whilst our English lard is termed 
in France ‘ saindoux.” Good lard should contain 99 per cent 
of hog’s fat. In the peasant speech of Devon it is named “ mort.” 
-* Aw, Lor, Missis! dawntee tell me nort about butter; poor 
vokes’ chillern be féced tu ayte curd an’ mort now times be sa 
bad.” In Lincolnshire lard is known as seam, and by analogy 
the white wood-anemone, as distinguished from the yellow 
buttercup, is the seam cup. In Dryden’s Ovid we read of Baucis 
and Philemon :— 
** By this the boiling kettle had prepared : 
And to the table sent the smoking lard, 
On which with eager appetite they dine, 
A savoury bit that served to relish wine.” 
Charles Lamb, as is well known to all readers of Elia, has 
devoted a delightful essay to the subject of Roast Pig, and more 
especially to that luxurious and toothsome dainty called 
“ Crackling,” showing how this Crackling was first exultingly 
discovered. The said immortal rhapsody, a “ Dissertation upon 
Roast Pig” never tires by repetition: “ 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,—these hobbledehoys,— 
but a young and tender suckling, under a moon old, guiltless as 
yet of the sty, with no original speck of the “‘ amor immunditie, the 
hereditary failing of the first parent, yet manifest; his voice as 
yet not broken, but something between a childish treble and a 
grumble, the mild forerunner, or praludium, 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 ! 
There is no flavour comparable, I will contend, to that of the 
crisp, tawny, well-watched, not over-roasted crackling, as it is 
well called; the very teeth are invited to their share of the 
pleasure at this banquet, in overcoming the coy, brittle resistance, 
—with the adhesive oleaginous—QO, call it not fat—but an in- 
_ definable sweetness growing up to it, the tender blossoming of fat, 
