评论
打印
Over the past century or so, as rood production in the West, but particularly in Britain and America. has become more industrialised and the population has become more urban, cured and dried products have become scarcer. The salami or chorizo you buy in a supermarket will probably have been cooked or irradiated rather than cured, which is a less foolproof method of killing pathogens (病原体). Other reasons for the decline in proper meat-curing include the disappearance of the neighbourhood butcher; the downward trend in meatconsumption; and, in the United States, the assimilation of the European immigrants who originally broughttheir sausage-making traditions with them-particularly the Italians, but also the Hungarians, Polish and Portuguese.
Americans with a taste for imported sausages cannot easily indulge it.Anyone wanting to export cured meal lo the United States must have a representative from the United States Department of Agriculture at the site of production and must follow the same severe procedures that have been felling American sausage-makers.Producers must keep voluminous logs on everything from the temperature of the storage mom-measured and recorded every four Hours-to the meat products' pH level, che proportion of water in dry-cured sausages and the cleanliness of their employees' shoes and clothing.
Jamon iberico-without question the most glorious use to which a pig can be put on this planet-has not beenlegally available in che United States until now. but will become so from 2007 because the Department of Agriculture has at long last decided that the methods used by Spanish artisans for millennia are unlikely to poison American citizens. Stealthy Americans have always packed sausages in their luggage when returningfrom European holidays. but customs inspections are surprisingly frequent and intrusive. Confiscated（没收）products are usually eaten. as they should be: your correspondent, returning to Washington from southernFrance, tried to hide a couple of saucissons de Lyon in his luggage. which made a policeman's German shepherd dog very happy.
Whatever one may think of the benefits or detriments of agricultural and culinary (烹饪的) industrialisation. it seems clear that it has contributed a lot of dull-tasting products. Given a choice. eaters vote with their palate: there really is no comparison between an artisan-made sausage pulled down from a butcher'sceiling and a shrink-wrapped salami on a supermarket shelf. The proper stuff is gaining ground, but it hasbecome a luxury item, appealing to taste and refinement rather than convenience or economy.
