Bourbelier de sanglier

This recipe is attested in all three of our highlighted sources, with small variations. All three prescribe parboiling the meat, then roasting it. A sauce of vingegar, verjus and spices accompanies it. The exact methods, however, do differ notably. LV instructs us to boil it in water briefly then remove it to a spit and roast it while basting it with a sauce that includes wine and is thickened with bread but strained. He tells us the sauce should be clear and dark. LM gives us similar instructions with a slightly different collection of spices, and gives us the option to thicken it or not thicken it. Both indicate cutting the Bourbelier into pieces and then boiling it in its sauce after roasting. As usual, DF gives more technical direction toward a dish we would think of as more “refined” in looking at the development of French cuisine. He instructs us to simmer it first in beef or mutton bouillon, or half wine and water, and then roast it, studding it with cloves near the end of the roasting. He does not instruct basting, nor boiling the meat in the sauce, and insists that it remain whole – or if a large animal, split lengthwise for presentation reasons. Instead of using pan drippings, he begins with beef or mutton broth to which he adds his spices and bread, then strains and directs that the sauce be served on the side of the dish. My redaction attempts to synethesize these dishes into one, providing us with a whole, sauced Bourbelier to present.

But what IS the Bourbelier? Here there is some confusion, I suspect largely due to LM. All modern redactions interpret this as the “loin” of the pig, however I believe it is the belly, and Scully agrees with me in his translations at least. He translates this as “the breast” in both LV and DF. In LM, the Goodman tells us “As for the bourbelier, it is the numbles, even though around here ‘numbles is said in some places, and ‘bourbelier’ in others.’ This, I think, is a misunderstanding on the Goodman’s part, and we must forgive him, as he is not a butcher. Earlier in his work, he is quite deliberate in explaining cuts of beef, including the numbles, which by his identification is probably what we now call the Short Loin. He says it is about a foot long, and stretches from the neck to the kidney. Saying tha tthe numbles is the loin is sensible, and the idea that it comes as a corruption from the Latin “lumbulus” also holds. However, no part of this matches up with the part of a pig we are discussing in these recipes. Chiquart makes it clear that this is a very large piece of the pig, stretching across the entire body. Likewise, catching the drippings from a pork loin is a fruitless effort – there are nearly none. As a major component of the sauce in both LV and LM, the belly makes more sense, providing us with ample and delicious drippings as it roasts. Since LM’s own recipe coincides with the character of both LV and DF, I think the mistake here is simply that the Goodman believes it to be the loin when it is in fact the belly.

References

LM 18, LM 91, LM 146, LV 42, DF 54-55