[Semirhage]

Bacon is cured belly meat, whereas this was apparently pure fat. Fat tends to concentrate flavors, good or bad, and in this case it would have probably be very very gamey.

Edit: I think we have to see a difference between domesticated pigs, bred and raised for purpose, and their cured, seasoned, fat... and some fat hacked off a wild ibex. If you’ve ever had wild game you’ll know what I mean about gamey flavors. I can only imagine that some ice age ibex would be an acquired taste at best. Pig fat is also some of the most delicious, mild fat around, which is why it’s pigs used in that article.

[merpnderp]

Wild hog is some of the most disgusting meat I've ever had. Gamey strong flavored like I was eating meat flavored with sour weeds. The bacon was inedible it was so bad.

Absolutely nothing like the sweet tasty pig you get from the store.

[dbcurtis]

Wild boar, or wild sow? In domestic pigs intended for slaughter, the males are castrated when a few days old in order to keep their meat from developing a gamey flavor. (Ask Iowa senator Joni Ernst if you want to learn how to develop that skill.) I could imagine wild boar meat would be inedible. But aside from that, diet will also impact the flavor if the meat. A diet heavy in acorns will probably add a pronounced pungency, for instance.

[mahesh_rm]

You mean, like this? http://www.emikodavies.com/blog/italian-table-talk-lardo-di-... What is called "Lardo" is considered gourmet in most Italian / European traditional cuisines, and I can clearly see people in 2018 easily paying hundreds of dollars for a kilo of Ibex lard. I understand curing it might optimize the taste, but I would not call dried/smoked lard horrible.

[giomasce]

Lardo di Colonnata is delicious and I love it (spoiler: I am from Tuscany), but you just take a thin slice of it on your bread. You would never fill your stomach with it, even if you have money to throw away, because it is very salty, spicy and of course fat. I can feel nausea only thinking about eating on that alone. Even if ibex is as good as pig, I really do not envy Otzi's last meal.

[forkLding]

I've had pure pig fat before and made it myself off pig stomach or other parts. The first couple bites are good if you deep fry it to a deep brown colour but if you eat more than a medium size, you can easily get sick and have nausea from the oiliness, the fat is also more chewy than you expect and you can choke on it if you even have a medium piece in your mouth (I choked). If I was to eat animal fat, I would only eat a little bit and not too much. We seem to get nauseous from too much oil.

[serf]

Did you read the article you linked to?

>The biggest mistake non-Italian speakers make with this absolutely delicious regional delicacy is that they translate it to “lard”, which, it must be strongly pointed out, it is not. What we call “lard” in English is known as strutto in Italian, which is used commonly for conserving, pastry making or frying. Lardo, however, is cured pig’s back fat, a unique type of salumi.

So, no, what is called 'lard' is not gourmet in Italian cuisine. That's a wholly separate thing from 'lardo', the delicacy you're referring to.

[optimuspaul]

I was going to say something like this. I have encountered "lard" in Europe quite a lot, but lard in the US is a little different. Anyway, "pure" fat is definitely an acquired taste and I agree with the GP that fat does concentrate all sorts of flavors good and bad and can be quite nasty.