Page:Husbandman and Housewife 1820.djvu/89

 a fat beef are about as good as tongue, and keep as well as pork.

Ham. For the same reason, hams improve by laying a week or eight days, if the season admits of it without freezing For an average for one ham use one ounce of salt petre; or if large two ounces; pulverise it, and with fine salt and water, wet the hams and lay them into a barrel. Prepare immediately a weak pickle, to the taste as salt as the ham is wanted, and after two days cover the ham with it. In two weeks broil a slice, if necessary, add a little fine salt; which is better than freshening it, if too salt. In three or four weeks smoke it. Six or eight pieces may be smoked in a week in a common oven- Lay them on sticks of wood ; place some walnut or maple chips within the lid ; raise this a little and put some coals to them. The smoke thus produced is much better than the smoke of a common chimney.

BOIL over a gentle fire six pounds of common salt, two pounds of powdered loaf sugar, three ounces of saltpetre, and three gallons of spring water. Carefully scum it, while boiling; and when quite cold, pour it over the meat, every part of which must be covered with the brine. In this pickle, it is said, the meat will pot only keep for many months, but the hardest and toughest beef will thus be rendered as mellow and tender as the flesh of a young fowl ; while either beef, pork, or even mutton, will have a fine flavour imparted by it. In warm weather, however. the blood must be expressed from the meat, and the whole well rubbed over with fine salt, before it is immersed in the liquor. Young pork should not be left longer than three or four days in this pickle, as it will then hp quite sufficiently softened; but hams, intended for drying, may remain a fortnight before they are hung up; when