[Cynnabar] Is peameal back bacon period?

[Johnna Holloway]

An easy way to survey period bacon recipes is use medievalcookery.com  
and use the cookbook search feature. http://www.medievalcookery.com/cgi/search.pl?term=bacon&file=all

You are often instructed to boil or bake a gammon of bacon, rolling it  
in peameal ????
Sometimes it is cooked with benes or peas....

Otherwise, James Villas in The Bacon Cookbook defines it as:

Peameal bacon: Authentic lean "Canadian bacon" cut from the eye of the  
pig loin; sweet pickle-cured, unsmoked, and coated in peameal or  
yellow cornmeal. Available in slabs or slices.

It isn't made from pork bellies but from the pork loin. I have sources  
that indicate that it is par-baked.

It may not be that old.

Peameal definition
During the war years, yellow peas were ground up into meal. Canadian  
bacon was rolled in this meal. This ensured better curing, shelf life  
and avoided bacterial problems. Over the years, this tradition was  
changed to cornmeal, due to the availability of corn.

The war being mentioned is given as turn of the last century.
http://www.realcanadianbacon.com/pork-tenderloin/pork-faq.shtml

The Canadian Oxford Dictionary simply says
peameal bacon

→ noun  (Cdn)
back bacon rolled in a coating of fine cornmeal.
- ORIGIN from the former practice of coating cured meats in a meal of  
ground dried peas

That's the only entry in the Oxford Reference Online database for the  
term.
OED under pea meal includes this quotation -note date-
1993 Toronto Life June (Food Guide) FG14/3 There are North American  
concessionsThe Butchers' own pastrami and peameal bacon.

HE Tairdelbach mentioned Zingermans. The blog entry  at Zingermans  
says in part:
Canadian Peameal Bacon

by Ari Weinzweig	 · July 24, 2008 ·

Canadian Bacon is a pickled eye of pork loin, and, seemingly has its  
origins in the work of Wiltshiremen who came over to Canada. Compared  
to American bacon, it’s: a) a different cut (a lot leaner than  
American bacons, which are made from pork belly), b) cured in a wet  
brine, c) not smoked, d) rolled in cornmeal.

While the latter is fairly common with stuff like catfish, best I can  
tell, this makes it completely unique in the bacon world. From what  
I’ve learned over the years, the rolling wasn’t any big brilliant  
culinary thing, but really just a practical solution to a practical  
issue. “In the ‘olden’ days, you would go to the grocery store,  
ask the meat counter for your “Peameal Bacon,” I learned from  
Canadian born, now living in the U.S bacon importer, Ken Haviland.  
“They would grab a hook,” he told me, “pull a loin out of the  
brine solution, roll it in cornmeal, package it up, weigh it, sticker  
it and hand it to you.”

With that in mind though, I’ve always wondered about the origin of  
the “peameal” name; the question came up because when I really  
thought about I realized that it was a bit odd since all the Canadian  
bacon I’ve ever come across was rolled, as I said above, in cornmeal  
I’ve never understood why the stuff isn’t called “cornmeal  
bacon.” The answer, apparently, is that Canadian bacon was originally  
rolled in ground dried yellow peas, but later that was changed to the  
more readily available cornmeal.

Folks from Canada, and in some case from areas up near the border, are  
pretty darned passionate about this bacon. As is true for grits in the  
South, peameal bacon can carry big emotional attachments up north.  
Just asking about peameal evoked a whole lot of info, emotion and some  
good culinary story telling. Seriously, all you have to do is talk to  
a couple Canadians (or close-to-Canada Americans like Ms. Stevens) and  
you start to realize that peameal bacon sandwiches, while pretty much  
unknown down here, are about the equivalent up there of pastrami in  
Manhattan or cheese steaks in Philadelphia. Iconic is starting to  
sound like understatement. I’d ask all my Canadian relatives about it  
but of course they all keep kosher so Canadian bacon is just something  
they’d seen signs for in the market when they went shopping.

Molly Stevens, author of the award-winning book Braising is one of the  
latter. She grew up in Buffalo, close enough to Canada that Canadian  
bacon and hockey were both a big deal for her family. “In my  
family,” she started out, “for some reason, it’s long been one of  
those ritual foods.” For me, Canadian bacon is just one more option  
on a long list cured pork options, and, in honesty, not in my top two  
or three. But for Molly (and I’m sure many others like her), is as  
much about emotion and memorable family meals as it is about the pork.

The List at SCA Cooks might be able to shed more light if you want  
more opinions.
http://lists.ansteorra.org/listinfo.cgi/sca-cooks-ansteorra.org

Hope this helps

Johnnae llyn Lewis

>
>
> On Tue, Aug 24, 2010 at 5:49 PM, David Vincent  
> <dvincent0864 at att.net> wrote:
> Some of you may know what this is.  Cured meat certainly is period,  
> but I am not having much success searching the various SCA online  
> resources for the peameal coating.  Originally, the coating was meal  
> from ground dried yellow peas, but changed to yellow cornmeal when  
> corn was brought back from the new world (I haven't been able to  
> find out exactly when this occurred).
>
> Anybody have any idea where this information may be found,  
> especially the variation using yellow peas?  I was hoping peameal  
> bacon had some period references, because it's so easily made and  
> economical relative to the commercial product.  Would make a good  
> subject for a workshop or class.
>
> Vincent
>

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