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Wild Boar
This dish is prepared and dressed in the same way as pork. Generally the flesh of the wild boar is cut into fillets or cutlets, or into slices, which are laid in a stewpan with butter, chives, parsley, thyme, basil, etc. When the slices are half done take them off the fire, and let them steep in their own gravy a day and a night; then fry them, and serve with pickled gherkins.
The method here — half-cooking the meat, then leaving it to sit in its own juices for a full day and night before frying — is the reason this cannot be followed. The points below explain the specific failures rather than offering a corrected version.
- The 24-hour steep is the fatal stepMeat brought only to "half done" has been warmed through the danger zone without ever reaching a temperature that kills bacteria, and is then held for a day and a night in a protein-rich liquid. In an unrefrigerated larder, and equally in a modern room-temperature kitchen, that is a long hold at bacterial growth temperatures. Clostridium perfringens, salmonella and staphylococcal toxin all thrive in exactly these conditions, and the final frying will not destroy heat-stable staphylococcal toxin once it has formed.
- Wild boar and trichinellaWild suids remain one of the principal reservoirs of Trichinella in Europe and North America, and game shot for private use may not pass through the testing that applies to commercial pork. Trichinella in game is reliably killed only by thorough cooking -- freezing is not considered dependable for game meat -- and "half done" achieves nothing of the sort; the recipe never specifies a final internal temperature. Game boar also carries hepatitis E and brucellosis risk. Use a current, tested game recipe with a measured finishing temperature.
- "Prepared and dressed in the same way as pork"This assumes the reader already knows a full pork method from elsewhere in the book, so the instruction here is deliberately incomplete. There is no weight, no pan temperature, no cooking time and no yield — nothing that could be scaled or checked.
- StewpanA stewpan in Victorian usage is a straight-sided, flat-bottomed pan with a lid, roughly what a modern sauté pan or shallow casserole does. It is stovetop equipment, not an oven dish.
- Chives, parsley, thyme, basilThe "etc." is doing real work: this is a fines herbes-style aromatic bed of whatever the kitchen garden held, and the quantities were left to the cook.
- Pickled gherkinsThe one part of the recipe that has survived unchanged. Sharp cornichons cutting through rich, fatty game meat is standard practice still, and the same logic underlies the cumberland sauces and rowan jellies served with venison and boar today.
Cassell's entry on wild boar reads like reference matter for a beast most British readers would never buy: boar had been extinct in the wild in Britain for centuries — estimates of the date run from the thirteenth century to the seventeenth, after failed restocking attempts — and any served in a late-Victorian house came from the Continent or from a park-kept herd. That accounts for the thin, secondhand instruction — "the same way as pork" — and for the distinctly French cast of the treatment, with its bed of chives, parsley, thyme and basil and its gherkin garnish. The long steep in the meat's own gravy belongs to an older tradition of tenderising and flavouring strong-tasting game, related to the days-long marinades and haut goût hanging that pre-refrigeration kitchens accepted as normal; boar was reputed tough and rank, and time was the usual remedy. Wild boar has since returned to parts of Britain through escapes from farms, and farmed boar is sold again, but modern game handling treats it with the same caution as pork rather than with the patience of a Victorian larder.