Soption
The soption, as the basting sauce is called, consists of a couple of quarts of hot vinegar, well seasoned with salt and red pepper pods, floating with melted butter. The skin side of the pig is greased, before turning it over, and the soption goes on the flesh side, which is its own natural container for the basting. After the soption is enriched with pig juice, some of it is taken out to be used as sauce for serving with the meat, and basting continues until all is done. The carving must be done carefully if not skilfully, leaving each portion some of the crisped skin.
In some parts the meat is hashed with some of the skin, and the hot meat piles are seasoned with some of the soption. Beaten biscuits, corn bread, coleslaw, corn on the cob and lemonade complete the menu, with perhaps barbecued chickens for the ladies, and little nips of corn liquor on the side for the men. A big party may have one of those iron pots on three legs full of Brunswick Stew, besides. For everyone must eat all he can. Even the hound dogs, after hanging around the outer circles and sniffing the air since dawn, get a feast of leftovers.
This is the vinegar-and-pepper mop for a whole pit-cooked hog, given as it would have been spoken rather than measured. The proportions are workable, but a few points need pinning down before you build a fire.
- Quantity and scaleTwo quarts is a whole-hog quantity, given without any statement of the hog's weight or the length of the cook. For a single shoulder or fresh ham you would need proportionately less.
- "Floating with melted butter"No amount is given, and none can be deduced: enough to float on the surface. It separates constantly, so the mop bucket has to be stirred or swirled before every pass.
- Red pepper podsThese are whole dried hot pods, not ground pepper or flakes. The recipe gives no number; pods crushed into the hot vinegar and left to steep provide the heat, where ground powder would settle out and scorch on the meat.
- VinegarCider vinegar is commonly associated with whole-hog barbecue of this kind, though the recipe does not specify a type. Distilled white vinegar works and is sharper; wine or balsamic would taste wrong against pork fat and smoke.
- The hinge: heat the mop, and keep it hotThe sauce goes on hot, not cold, so it does not drop the surface temperature of the meat. Keep the pot at the edge of the coals or on a side burner the whole time.
- Sauce drawn from the carcassLiquid dipped out of the pig's cavity has been in contact with meat that may not yet be cooked through. If you carry that off as table sauce, bring it to a full boil in a clean pan first and hold it there a minute before serving.
- Greasing the skin sideThe recipe has the skin side greased before the hog is turned over; no reason is given. The soption goes on the flesh side only.
- Carving"Carefully if not skilfully" is the whole instruction, with each portion to get some of the crisped skin; the recipe notes that in some parts the meat is instead hashed with some of the skin. Distribute the crackling deliberately, since a whole hog yields far less crisp skin than it does meat.
- The rest of the menuBeaten biscuits, corn bread, coleslaw, corn on the cob, lemonade and Brunswick stew are all separate dishes; nothing here tells you how to make them. Plan them as their own recipes.