Page:The English housekeeper, 6th.djvu/54

26 quicker for the washing.—Examine it well; and be careful to take all the kernels out of beef.

Some persons like salted meat to be red. For this purpose, saltpetre is necessary. Otherwise, the less use is made of it the better, as it tends to harden the meat. Sweet herbs, spices, and even garlic, may be rubbed into hams and tongues, with the pickle, according to taste. Bay salt gives a nice flavour. Sugar is generally used in curing hams, tongues and beef; for the two latter some recommend lump sugar, others treacle, to make the meat eat short.

In cold weather salt should be warmed before the fire. Indeed, some use it quite hot. This causes it to penetrate more readily into the meat than it does when rendered hard and dry by frost.

Salting troughs or tubs should be clean, and in an airy place. After meat of any kind has been once well rubbed, keep it covered close, not only with the lid of the vessel, but, in addition, with the thick folds of some woollen article, in order to exclude the air. This is recommended by good housekeepers; yet in Hampshire the trough is sometimes left uncovered, the flitches purposely exposed to the air.

As soon as the hog is cut up, sprinkle salt thickly over the flitches, and let them lie on a brick floor all night. Then wipe the salt off, and lay them in a salting trough. For a large flitch of bacon, allow 2 gallons of salt, 1 lb. of bay salt, 4 cakes of salt prunella, a ¼ lb. of saltpetre, and 1 lb. of common moist sugar; divide this mixture into two parts; rub one half into it the first day, and rub it in well. The following day rub the other half in, and continue to rub and turn the flitch every day for three weeks. Then hang the flitches to drain, roll them in bran, and hang them to smoke, in a wood-fire chimney. The more quickly, in reason, they are smoked, the better the bacon will taste.

Let a leg of pork hang for three days; then beat it with a rolling pin, and rub into it 1 oz. of saltpetre finely