Page:Mrs Beeton's Book of Household Management.djvu/882

782 dry foods and water. The worst is that salted meat has lost those saline constituents that are not readily supplied except in fresh fruits and vegetables, precisely those foods that are rarest wherever salt meat is most likely to be used, in large towns, cold countries, during the winter season, or at sea. Sailors at sea get rations of lime-juice when their supply of vegetables brought from shore comes to an end, not to counteract the effects of the salt, as some suppose, but to furnish in another form what the brine has taken away. In Norway, salt food and scurvy are alike common.

Smoked Meat.—Smoking meat and fish greatly increases its power of keeping. Creosote is an excellent antiseptic, and is sold to paint over meat as a substitute for the lengthy and troublesome process of smoking. Borax is also used as a preservative.