<html><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; ">An easy way to survey period bacon recipes is use medievalcookery.com and use the cookbook search feature. <a href="http://www.medievalcookery.com/cgi/search.pl?term=bacon&file=all">http://www.medievalcookery.com/cgi/search.pl?term=bacon&file=all</a><div><br></div><div>You are often instructed to boil or bake a gammon of bacon, rolling it in peameal ????</div><div>Sometimes it is cooked with benes or peas....<br><div><br></div><div>Otherwise, James Villas in The Bacon Cookbook defines it as:<div><br></div><div>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.</div><div><br></div><div>It isn't made from pork bellies but from the pork loin. I have sources that indicate that it is par-baked.</div><div><br></div><div>It may not be that old.</div><div><br></div><div><span class="faqHead">Peameal definition</span><br>
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.</div><div><br></div><div>The war being mentioned is given as turn of the last century. </div><div><a href="http://www.realcanadianbacon.com/pork-tenderloin/pork-faq.shtml">http://www.realcanadianbacon.com/pork-tenderloin/pork-faq.shtml</a></div><div><br></div><div>The Canadian Oxford Dictionary simply says</div><div><div id="entrytext"><big><b><span class="entry"><span class="HIT1">peameal</span> <span class="HIT5">bacon</span></span></b></big><br>
<br>→ <b><i>noun</i></b> <i>(Cdn)</i> <br>back <span class="HIT1">bacon</span> rolled in a coating of fine cornmeal. <br><small>- ORIGIN</small> from the former practice of coating cured meats in a meal of ground dried peas <br></div></div><div id="entrytext"><br></div><div id="entrytext">That's the only entry in the Oxford Reference Online database for the term.</div><div id="entrytext">OED under pea meal includes this quotation -note date-</div><div id="entrytext"><a name="50173391q194"></a><!--start_q--><nobr><b><!--start_d-->1993<!--end_d--></b></nobr> <i><!--start_w-->Toronto Life<!--end_w--></i> June (Food Guide) <!--open_smallcaps--><small>FG</small><!--close_smallcaps-->14/3 <!--start_qt-->There are North American <nobr>concessions<img src="http://dictionary.oed.com.proxy.lib.umich.edu/graphics/parser/gifs/sp/em.gif" alt="{em}" align="absbottom" border="0" height="14" width="13">The</nobr> Butchers' own pastrami and peameal bacon.</div><div><br></div><div>HE Tairdelbach mentioned Zingermans. The blog entry at Zingermans says in part:</div><div><div id="content">
<div class="post" id="post-214">
<h2 class="posttitle"><a href="http://www.zingermansroadhouse.com/2008/07/24/canadian-peameal-bacon/" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent link to Canadian Peameal Bacon">Canadian Peameal Bacon</a></h2><p class="postmeta">
by Ari Weinzweig · July 24, 2008 · </p>
<div class="postentry"><p>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.</p><p>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.”</p><p>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.</p><p>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.</p><p>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.</p></div></div><form action="http://www.zingermansroadhouse.com/wp-comments-post.php" method="post" id="commentform">
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The List at SCA Cooks might be able to shed more light if you want more opinions.</div><div><a href="http://lists.ansteorra.org/listinfo.cgi/sca-cooks-ansteorra.org">http://lists.ansteorra.org/listinfo.cgi/sca-cooks-ansteorra.org</a></div><div><br></div><div>Hope this helps</div><div><br></div><div>Johnnae llyn Lewis</div><div><br></div><div><div><blockquote type="cite"><br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Tue, Aug 24, 2010 at 5:49 PM, David Vincent <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:dvincent0864@att.net">dvincent0864@att.net</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left-width: 1px; border-left-style: solid; border-left-color: rgb(204, 204, 204); margin-top: 0pt; margin-right: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex; position: static; z-index: auto; "> <div><div style="font-family: times new roman,new york,times,serif; font-size: 12pt; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><div>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).<br> <br>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.<br> <br>Vincent</div></div></div></blockquote></div><br></blockquote></div><br></div></div></div></body></html>