A History Of Hog Roasting

The concept of the hog roast and the spit roasting method dates back thousands of years and is known by many names such as rotisserie, smoke jack and a thousand and one variations in the world’s languages.

From the lowly UK supermarket chicken rotisserie, through to donner kebabs – the spit roast style of cooking plays a strong role in modern British life, and has its roots in commonplace medieval cooking and far further back in history.

Dictionaries define spit roasting as “a style of roasting where meat is skewered on a spit – a long solid rod used to hold food while it is being cooked over a fire in a fireplace or over a campfire, or roasted in an oven”, and thus it could be argued that the testosterone fueled environment of a sunday barbeque is a modern day interpretation of the spit roast.

For historical references one source of information is the Google Scholar tool which lists all spit roast referenced articles it holds in its extensive database. Our favourite article is a Roast Pig by Charles Lamb (1775 – 1834) with its evocative quote “O father, the pig, the pig, do come and taste how nice the burnt pig eats.”

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