Butchery

“ Out leap the butchers, who have been chattering all the way like madmen, and off they straggle for the Cattle Market (still chattering, of course, incessantly) , in hats and caps of all shapes, in coats and blouses, in calf-skins, cow-skins, horse- skins, furs, shaggy mantles, hairy coats, sacking, baize, oil-skin, anything you please that will keep a man and a butcher warm, upon a frosty morning. ”

“ I have observed that the old ones pass all the carcasses, which, trailing to the ground, are hanging before the butchers’ shops, as if they were on a sort of parole d'honneur not to touch them; the middle-aged ones wistfully eye this meat, yet jog on also, while the piglings, who (so like mankind) have more appetite than judgment, can rarely resist taking a nibble; yet, no sooner does the dead calf begin again to move, than from the window immediately above out pops the head of a butcher, who, drinking his coffee, whip in hand, inflicts a prompt punishment, sounding quite equal to the offence. ”

“ This bull-beef, you may be sure, could not be any thing extraordinary, nor any ways equal to the flesh of such as are tame; especially after it had run so far, and so hard, before it was killed. These wild cattle will give the hunters a chase sometimes of several miles together after they are wounded; which makes the flesh but indifferent meat, especially if it be a bull; but people in want are glad of what comes first to hand; for these wild cattle are a great help to such as live in the remote parts, who, in necessitous times, come here a hunting. ”

“ I really should, for it reminds me of my boyish days, if it was only when I had Montfauçon for a slaughter-house and broken-down horses for cattle. It is droll, but if I had the means, a butcher's is the trade in which I should set up, for I like it. To go on a good nag to buy cattle at fairs,—to return home to one's own fireside, to warm yourself if cold, or dry yourself if wet,—to find your housekeeper, or a good, jolly, plump wife, cheerful and pleasant, with a parcel of children to feel in your pockets to see if you have brought them home anything! ”

“ There was a man in our village who led an exceedingly disreputable life. One morning when he got up rather early, two men appeared, and led him away to the market-place, where he saw a butcher hanging up half a pig. As they approached, the two men shoved him with all their might against the dead animal, and lo! his own flesh began to blend with the pork before him, while his conductors hurried off in an opposite direction. By-and-by the butcher wanted to sell a piece of his meat; and seizing a knife, began to cut off the quantity required. ”

“ For this reason many butchers breed pigs, and let them find their living in their slaughter houses. Beware, therefore, good reader, of butcher pork.
We are told that in the great establishments in France for the rearing of chickens and fowls, that they are fed upon horse flesh, which they eat voraciously. If carnivorous feeding makes our pigs’ flesh poisonous, it is very probable that a like system of feeding will make our delicate chicken meat a curse rather than a blessing to invalids. We may feel pretty sure that the horse flesh is not of the most healthy kind or of the freshest quality. ”

“ Now, when the bill of fare offers such tempting viands as buffalo beef, venison, mountain mutton, turkey, grouse, wildfowl, hares, rabbits, beaver and their tails, &c., &c., the station assigned to "dog" as No. 2 in the list can be well appreciated—No. 1, in delicacy of flavour, richness of meat, and other good qualities, being the flesh of panthers, which surpasses every other, and all put together.
"Painter meat can't 'shine' with this," says a hunter, to express the delicious flavour of an extraordinary cut of "tender loin," or delicate fleece. ”

“ Along the sides of the gutters sit the fish and sausage sellers, who may be seen washing their wares in the filthy stream before them. The butchers exhibit good meat, but only beef and mutton, the slaughtering of young beasts being forbidden by law. ”

“ The Butcher has his arts and sophistications. To make meat weigh as heavy as possible he checks the full bleeding of the victim of his knife, and to make it appear plump and white and glistening, particularly joints of veal and lamb, he inflates the cellular membrane, by blowing into it with all his might, the breath respired from his lungs: by means of which practice, should he be infected with any loathsome disease, his customers stand a very good chance of being inoculated with “the blessing.” ”

“ Just then a butcher came by, wheeling a fine little pig in a barrow, and he stopped to speak with Jack. “What ails you,” said he, “that you look so sad and down in the mouth?”
“Oh,” said Jack, “my cow has kicked me and will not give me a drop of milk,” and he told the butcher the whole story, how he had exchanged the gold for a horse, and the horse for a cow.
“You made a bad bargain,” said the butcher. “That cow is old and will never give milk. There [350] is nothing to do with her but to knock her on the head and use her for beef.” ”

“ There is also the loss caused by the warble to the butcher—and through the butcher to the Army Service Corps. The presence of the fly-larva, which is quite a large creature, induces chronic inflammation in the tissues, and a state of things known to the trade as ‘licked beef,’ and unless the meat-salesman cuts away the affected parts the meat is unsaleable in the market, or greatly depreciated in value. ”

“ The next morning the cow was slaughtered. Happily, in all the cutting and slashing he escaped all harm, and he slipped among the sausage-meat. When the butcher came near to set to work, he cried with all his might,
"Don't cut so deep, don't cut so deep, I am underneath!" ”

“ I want meat that has been pickled in brine. I should like a piece from that barrel." But the butcher said, "It is not good meat. I have better meat in the inner room, and I will get it for you." So the butcher and Saint Nicholas entered the inner room and closed the door behind them while the giant sat on the barrel in the corner, trying to hide it with his great fat legs.
In the inner room was a barrel filled with brine, but with only a small piece of meat at the bottom. Saint Nicholas said he would take that piece. The butcher bent far into the barrel to reach down in search of the meat. ”

“ It is very amusing to see butchers in this place cut up their meat. Four, eight, or twelve persons, join to buy a sheep. The sheep is killed, and the butcher has to divide it into as many equal parts as joint-purchasers. He begins by dividing it into four equal parts, but not in the way we should imagine, by cutting the carcase into four. No, quite different. He first divides the intestines into four portions, cutting the heart, liver, and lights into four equal portions, and so of the rest. Sometimes the heart is made a present to some favoured individual. ”

“ One can see that in the way their eyes follow every movement, with the same desperate hope that you see in the eyes of the dogs when they stand round the butcher’s cart and implore Heaven that the butcher may drop a bit of meat. ”

“ Once our travel was entirely blocked by a fight. A butcher in a bloody apron had dashed out of his shop and attacked the driver of a brewer's sledge. A crowd gathered miraculously and cheered on this spectacle; women appeared at all the windows; urchins hooted; mongrel dogs barked. When the butcher had been worsted and chased back into his shop by the maddened brewer we were allowed to pursue our journey. ”

“ Many people—travellers and hunters—prefer it to any other species of meat.
The flesh of the cow, as may be supposed, is more tender and savoury than that of the bull; and in a hunt when “meat” is the object, the cow is selected as a mark for the arrow or bullet.
The parts most esteemed are the tongue, the “hump-ribs” (the long spinous processes of the first dorsal vertebra) , and the marrow of the shank bones. “Boudins” (part of the intestines) are also favourite “tit-bits” among the Indians and trappers. ”

“ The butcher is busy separating the coarser from the finer parts of the meat; the fishmonger gutting his fish, and setting the entrails carefully on one side—there is no part too vile or mean, none too dear and delicate to find a customer. ”

“ Fed to repletion on the succulent prairie grasses they know nothing but contentment. The shadow of the butcher’s knife has no terrors for them. They live only for their day. And the evening, when their stomachs are full and repose is in sight, is the height of their contentment. ”

“ The butcher, the next day, cuts the hog up; and then the house is filled with meat! Souse, griskins, blade-bones, thigh-bones, spare-ribs, chines, belly-pieces, cheeks, all coming into use one after the other, and the last of the latter not before the end of about four or five weeks. But about this time, it is more than possible that the Methodist parson will pay you a visit. It is remarked in America, that these gentry are attracted by the squeaking of the pigs, as the fox is by the cackling of the hen. ”

“ The East End butcher is not only a thrifty but an inquiring soul. Until I viewed his shop I had no idea that a sheep could be so untidy inside; and as for a cow—he finds things in a cow she didn't know she had. ”

“ None of your sending sheep to market with their legs tied together, and jammed in a cart, and sweating and suffering, for me. They've got to go standing comfortably on their legs, or go not at all. And I'm going to know the butcher that kills my animals, that have been petted like children. ”

“ The flesh and skin have been removed from these trophies; nothing remains but the whitened bones. Boar-spears, pikes, hunting-knives and horns, fishing-nets, falcon coifs, implements of war, lances, francisques or double edged axes, swords, bucklers and shields painted in garish colors—all these are ranged along the walls. On the table lie spread sheep and wild boars roasted whole, mountains of ham and smoked venison, avalanches of cabbage in vinegar, the latter being a favorite dish with the Franks; chunks of beef, mutton and veal of the cattle fattened in the count's yards ”

“ The tripe man comes around for the stomach; one man buys all the tongues, and another has a contract for all the tails; and so on, until every scrap is disposed of.
If we visit the abattoir on a cold day we shall see perhaps three thousand beeves hanging up in the cool and airy room, but in warm weather we shall have to take a peep into one of those gigantic refrigerators yonder, each of which holds three hundred cattle. The meat is suspended from hooks over a vast bed of ice which keeps the air at a temperature of thirty-eight degrees. ”

“ The great excitement is when one breaks away from the herd and gallops madly up and down hill, and you gallop after him anywhere, over and among rocks and trees, doubling when he doubles, and heading him till you get him back again. The bulls were quite easily managed, but the cows with calves, old or young, were most troublesome. By accident I rode between one cow and her calf in a narrow place, and the cow rushed at me and was just getting her big horns under the horse, when he reared, and spun dexterously aside. ”

“ Pigs, Profit of, to the Butcher—Sucking-pigs—Pork-butchers—Pig-killing at Rome—Pickling Pork—Bacon: Mode of Curing in Hampshire—Buckinghamshire—Witshire—Yorkshire—Westphalia—America—Brine a Poison for Pigs—Quantity of Bacon, Ham, and Salt Pork imported during the last Three Years—Importation of Swine—Pigs' Dung as Manure. There is perhaps no animal so entirely profitable to the butcher as the pig. ”

“ In other places butchers were far from acquiring the same importance which they did in France and Belgium (Figs. 90 and 91) , where much more meat was consumed than in Spain, Italy, or even in Germany. Nevertheless, in almost all countries there were certain regulations, sometimes eccentric, but almost always rigidly enforced, to ensure a supply of meat of the best quality and in a healthy state. In England, for instance, butchers were only allowed to kill bulls after they had been baited with dogs, no doubt with the view of making the flesh more tender. ”

“ On approaching each butcher's stall before it opens "the porters, bending under the weight of a side of beef, quicken their steps so as not to be assailed by the crowd which presses against them, seeming to devour the raw meat with their eyes." ”

“ The butcher has more meat in his shop than he himself can consume, and the brewer and the baker would each of them be willing to purchase a part of it. But they have nothing to offer in exchange, except the different productions of their respective trades, and the butcher is already provided with all the bread and beer which he has immediate occasion for. ”

“ Strength is less required than address, in the manner of using, it; and to facilitate this, the butcher should be ordered to divide the joints of the bones, especially of the neck, breast, and loin of mutton, lamb, and veal; which may then be easily cut into thin slices attached to the adjoining bones. If the whole of the meat belonging to each bone should be too thick, a small slice may be taken off between every two bones. The more fleshy joints, as fillet of veal, leg or saddle of mutton and beef, are to be helped in thin slices, neatly cut and smooth ”

“ She saw a butcher riding along the road, and she called to him “Butcher, butcher, kill ox; ox won’t drink water, water won’t quench fire, fire won’t [96] burn stick, stick won’t beat dog, dog won’t bite pig, pig won’t go over the stile, and I won’t get home till midnight with my pail of fine ripe blackberries.” ”