This Is Not a Snack Board: A Brief, Sweaty Rant About Real Charcuterie and the Crimes Committed Against It
- davidcdouglass
- Jan 4
- 4 min read
Authentic French Charcuterie
Charcuterie is not a grazing board. Let’s get that out of the way before someone reaches for a ramekin of honey and a sprig of rosemary they have no intention of eating.
Real charcuterie—real—is not a lifestyle accessory. It is not something you assemble while the guests are parking their Subarus out front. It is not a plank of driftwood groaning under the weight of prosciutto roses, fig jam, chocolate-covered almonds, and three cheeses that all taste like refrigerated regret. That thing we’ve come to call “charcuterie” in America is a polite lie we tell ourselves so we can drink more wine without admitting we’re just snacking.
Actual charcuterie is older, darker, angrier. It comes from necessity, not aesthetics. It was born in cold rooms and hard winters, in places where people understood—intimately—that if you didn’t preserve the pig properly, you didn’t eat later. Period. No backups. No delivery apps. Just you, the animal, salt, time, and the quiet terror of getting it wrong.
Charcuterie is pork’s afterlife.
Liver Pate’
In France—where the word actually means something—a charcutier wasn’t a curator. He was a craftsman. A butcher with knowledge passed down like contraband. He understood muscles, fat ratios, bacteria, humidity. He knew which cuts could be salted, which needed curing, which had to be cooked, which could hang safely in air without killing anyone. This wasn’t romantic. It was practical. The romance came later, after centuries of success.
Pork Rillette
Pâté, rillettes, terrines, saucisson sec, jambon cru, boudin noir—these are not “options.” They are categories of survival. Each exists because someone, somewhere, figured out how to make something delicious out of what would otherwise rot. Fat emulsified with meat and spice not because it was fancy, but because it worked. Salt applied aggressively because moderation meant starvation. Time used as an ingredient because time was all they had.
Contrast that with the American charcuterie board: a performance. A Pinterest-driven still life. All surface, no soul. It’s assembled, not made. Purchased, not earned. There’s no curing, no waiting, no anxiety. No risk. Just a credit card and a vague sense of smug accomplishment.
And here’s the uncomfortable truth: most of what’s on those boards isn’t even charcuterie.
Pork Terrine
Cheese? Lovely. Not charcuterie. Olives? Fine. Still not charcuterie. Crackers, nuts, fruit, chocolate, honeycomb, god help us—hummus—none of this belongs in the conversation. Charcuterie is about meat preservation. Full stop. Once you start diluting that idea, you’re not honoring tradition—you’re avoiding it.
Real charcuterie smells faintly of funk. It has edges. It resists you a little. It is unapologetically pork-forward, fatty, mineral, sometimes iron-rich, sometimes almost sweet in a way that makes you pause. It asks you to chew. To think. To sit with it. It pairs better with mustard than jam, with cornichons than grapes, with bread that has structure instead of crackers engineered to disappear.
And it does not care if you like it.
Saucisson Sec
That’s the thing Americans struggle with most. We want food to flatter us. To reassure. To smile back. Charcuterie doesn’t do that. It’s not interested in your preferences or your dietary anxieties. It’s telling you a story about place and labor and patience, and if you’re not paying attention, that’s on you.
When you eat a proper pâté de campagne—coarse, peppery, streaked with fat—you’re tasting decisions made months ago. When you spread rillettes, you’re dealing with meat that was cooked slowly in its own fat until it surrendered completely. When you slice saucisson, you’re biting into controlled decay. Managed rot. Civilization’s victory over entropy.
That’s not a metaphor. That’s the job.
Jambon Cru
The American bastardization comes from fear. Fear of salt. Fear of fat. Fear of funk. Fear of anything that can’t be explained in a bullet point or marketed with a seasonal theme. So we soften it. Sweeten it. Hide it behind fruit and cheese and neutral textures until it’s no longer challenging—until it’s just another thing to nibble while talking about real estate.
We turn something profound into an accessory.
And look, I get it. Real charcuterie is hard. It takes space. It takes time. It takes failure. It takes the humility to admit you don’t control everything—bacteria especially. It requires trust in traditions that don’t fit neatly into American impatience. You can’t rush a ham. You can’t optimize a salami. You can’t “hack” a terrine.
You either respect the process or you’re just stacking snacks.
Boudin Noir
The tragedy isn’t that Americans get charcuterie wrong. It’s that we’re missing out on one of food’s great expressions of intelligence. Charcuterie is cooking without heat, cooking with foresight, cooking that assumes the future exists and plans accordingly. It’s food that understands mortality and works around it.
So the next time someone hands you a board the size of a coffee table covered in cheese cubes and strawberries and calls it charcuterie, smile politely. Take a piece if you must. But know, in your bones, that somewhere a pig deserved better—and someone, long ago, knew exactly how to give it that dignity.
Real charcuterie doesn’t want to impress you.
It just wants to last.
Boudin Noir
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