A Sausage History of Greek Epic

I have been offering value to my students this semester is by offering running commentary on the quality of cuts of meat discussed by the “Iliad.” In Book Eight, for example, when the Greeks send all of their best people to maybe get Achilles—that whiny bitch, frankly—to come out of his tent and do some fighting, Achilles has Patroclus (man-friend and butler) prepare a cut of pork “marbled” with fat. In the Fagles translation, the language of the high-end steakhouse comes to the ringing plains of Troy: “marbling” is, after all, about the most desired thing one can have in one’s meat, ensuring that the fat will mix evenly through the tougher (but tastier) muscle tissue. Here as throughout the epic, the Greeks seem to be eating suspiciously well: Achilles either knows a guy on the Trojan beach, or he’s been getting regular shipments from the mainland.

In terms of pork, we foreigners are significantly less lucky, at least in my little corner of Turkey. I should be clear that coming to a Muslim country and expecting pork is elementally stupid—but then I lived in America for ten years, so the notion of a consumer good not instantly available to me becomes hard to take, particularly if bacon is involved. I’m not even a bacon obsessive to the level of, say, the Chicago norm. But I am told that in a few months I will be craving nitrates like a pudgy vampire. (Which is handy, since “pudgy vampire” is my skin tone already.)

There is, multicultural gods be praised, a pork section in Real, the local “hipermarket" at which I spend 1/3 of my waking hours and the entirety of my discretionary income. But it is the saddest, weirdest place you’ve ever seen: one refrigerator case set off exclusively for pig products, each one more shockingly expensive than the last. The bacon, which looks pretty generic, is ninety lire (about forty-five dollars) per kilogram; the prosciutto is a little bit better, but still priced like medium-grade opium.

Rumors abound of a British “sausage guy” who sources product, apparently, from Russia. However, word is also that he has “disappeared,” no doubt into the encased meat-products underworld of Ankara. Judging by how it is priced, the “pork” at Real might well be former British national—so we pray for the sausage guy’s safe return.