No other meat has as many preparations as Pork – you have Bresaola out of beef, and I've seen the odd artisanal lamb and venison product, but why do you not get the range of hams, sausages, bacons etc out of other meats? I'm guessing something to do with the stability of the fat – but I'm not sure.
Meat – special about pork that makes it so suitable for curing
curingmeatpork
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Best Answer
I suspect that this is because in Europe, the pig has been a fairly common household animal. For example, in the past in Poland, all families that didn't live in closely packed towns would have their own pigs. Some of the reasons for keeping pigs is that they don't need much room and can eat almost anything - you can easily feed them household scraps, or anything else you can find.
For most of history, pretty much everyone has been very poor. Thus, people need to keep an animal that can eat anything. For a pig you don't need to find grass or keep hay like you do for cows and sheep. And likewise you find a way to use every part of the animal no matter what. You also no doubt get a bit bored of pork all the time, so a variety of different methods of preparing and preserving would be developed.
So basically, I think the number of European preparations for pork is due to our long and close relationship with pigs due to their practical nature.
Further to support the idea that this has a Northern/Eastern/Western European cultural cause, Halal butchers will apparently sell beef bacon, and pastrami is traditionally beef, and comes from the Mediterranean area (more or less) so I suspect that there are simply a range of beef and perhaps lamb products that many Europeans either don't know about or don't consider as essential or main-stream.