Citing a Chinese manuscript that a friend has kindly translated, Lamb explains that mankind ate meat raw until the swineherd Ho-ti’s careless son Bo-bo burned down the family cottage and, licking his scorched fingers, discovered the taste of crackling. Houses were burned all over the country until a sage found a simpler method, and the essay ends in a rapturous defence of roast pig.
The most famous of the Essays of Elia, a short and endlessly quotable piece of English comic prose. Download the free EPUB.