Flitch of bacon custom

The awarding of a flitch of bacon to married couples who can swear to not having regretted their marriage for a year and a day is an old tradition, the remnants of which still survive in some pockets in England. The tradition was maintained at Wychnoure until at least the eighteenth century but now remains only as a carving over the fireplace. At Little Dunmow in Essex a similar ceremony also survived into the eighteenth century. The tradition can be traced back to at least the fourteenth century at both sites and the Dunmow flitch is referred to in Chaucer. The awarding of a flitch at both sites seems to have been an exceedingly rare event.

The Dunmow tradition was revived in Victorian times, largely inspired by a book (The Flitch of Bacon) by William Harrison Ainsworth. Flitch trials are still held in modern times at Great Dunmow. A counsel is employed to cross-examine the nominated couples and attempt to show they are undeserving of the award.

There is evidence that the flitch of bacon tradition existed outside Britain in mainland Europe and some would push its origins back as far as Saxon times. Historian Hélène Adeline Guerber associates the origins of the flitch of bacon ceremony with the Yule feast of Norse tradition in which boar meat is eaten in honour of the god Freyr.

Flitch

Flitch can refer to the following things:

Wood veneer

In woodworking, veneer refers to thin slices of wood, usually thinner than 3 mm (1/8 inch), that typically are glued onto core panels (typically, wood, particle board or medium-density fiberboard) to produce flat panels such as doors, tops and panels for cabinets, parquet floors and parts of furniture. They are also used in marquetry. Plywood consists of three or more layers of veneer, each glued with its grain at right angles to adjacent layers for strength. Veneer beading is a thin layer of decorative edging placed around objects, such as jewelry boxes. Veneer is also used to replace decorative papers in Wood Veneer HPL. Veneer is also a type of manufactured board.

Veneer is obtained either by "peeling" the trunk of a tree or by slicing large rectangular blocks of wood known as flitches. The appearance of the grain and figure in wood comes from slicing through the growth rings of a tree and depends upon the angle at which the wood is sliced. There are three main types of veneer-making equipment used commercially:

Bacon

Bacon is a meat product prepared from a pig and usually cured. It is first cured using large quantities of salt, either in a brine or in a dry packing; the result is fresh bacon (also known as green bacon). Fresh bacon may then be further dried for weeks or months in cold air, or it may be boiled or smoked. Fresh and dried bacon is typically cooked before eating, often by frying. Boiled bacon is ready to eat, as is some smoked bacon, but may be cooked further before eating.

Bacon is prepared from several different cuts of meat. It is usually made from side and back cuts of pork, except in the United States and Canada, where it is most commonly prepared from pork belly (typically referred to as "streaky", "fatty", or "American style" outside of the US and Canada). The side cut has more meat and less fat than the belly. Bacon may be prepared from either of two distinct back cuts: fatback, which is almost pure fat, and pork loin, which is very lean. Bacon-cured pork loin is known as back bacon.

Bacon (Red Elvises album)

Bacon is a 2014 album by Russian-American rock band Igor & the Red Elvises.

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Bacon (card game)

Bacon, sometimes called American Euchre, is a trick-taking card game which resembles a simplified version of Euchre. It differs from Euchre in that it uses a full 52-card Anglo-American deck, has a slightly modified scoring system and trump selection system, uses a normalized card ordering to make it easier to learn, and adds the aspect of permission. It originated in the mid-to-late 1900s and is somewhat popular in the Eastern United States. It is one of the simpler trick-taking games and is a good game for introducing the concept of trumps to inexperienced players.

Object

The object of Bacon is to be the first player to reach a predetermined threshold of points, usually 10 or 15. Players work together with their partner, who sits across from them, to collect more tricks than their opponents. In each hand, the team that wins the majority of the 5 tricks receives 1 point, or 2 if all 5 tricks are won. The score received by a team is doubled if they were not the team to declare trump or if one of the team members won the tricks "alone" (see below).