The portal of Sainte-Marie d'Oloron cathedral, sculpted in
around 1120, depicts hams that are probably just about to
be cut up. All the aspects of a Béarn kitchen are shown,
on the Evangelical pretext of representing the preparations
for the Marriage at Cana.
On this sculpted stone, you can admire the "pèle-porc"
ceremony - the sacrifice of the pig.
"Le mal temps passe et retourne le bon
Pendant qu'on trinque autour du gras jambon"
Rabelais also enjoyed this regional delicacy, which he put
on the menu of Grangousier: "a good fellow in his time
(...) (he) was ordinarily well furnished with gammons of bacon,
both of Westphalia, Mayence and Bayonne, store of dried neat
tongues (…) and mustard, a good deal of (…) powdered
mullet called botargos, great provision of sausages..."
If Grangousier were here now, he might have difficulty getting
hold of the botargos (...), but four centuries on, he would
still find his faithful Jambon de Bayonne.
A famous anecdote describes him in Paris, receiving the husband
of his nursemaid, who was from the Béarn region. The
nursemaid's husband observed the bare beams of the ceiling from
which no ham was hanging, and commiserated: "Didn't you
manage to kill a pig this year?" As consolation, he withdrew
from his haversack some bacon and "miques" that the
sovereign was so fond of, then added: Henri, my dear friend,
you must be starving; I'll send you some."
When he became King of France he was just as much as of
a gourmet and kept the taste for the foods of his birthplace,
having them sent to both his military camps and to Paris:
his dinner table became a powerful means of promoting regional
produce.
The French Revolution dethroned the King, but not the ham! In
June 1793, the local representatives organised a patriotic collection,
and a delegation from the town of Pau went to the capital to
hand it to the Paris municipality. "In their basket there
were 362 hams, 185 shoulders of pork, 119 pieces of bacon and
24 goose legs."
This went down so well that Fleuriot, Mayor of Paris, asked
the delegation to stay in Paris until the celebration of the
20th day of the month of Prairial (in the revolutionary calendar),
and put his private box at the opera at their disposal. It
had turned out to be a worthwhile trip ...
