Bacon And Eggs

Have a saucepan well heated, and in it lay thin slices of bacon. Fry on both sides till crisp. Put on a hot platter, and into the hot fat remaining in the saucepan slip eggs, one at a time, from a saucer. Cook till slightly browned on one side, then turn and brown on the other side. Lay the eggs on the platter, put a slice or two of bacon on each egg and serve at once.

Fried Bacon

Bacon is best cooked not in an iron fryingpan, but on tin or granite. Heat hot an omelet pan or a tin pieplate. Cook rather slowly, turning the bacon from one side to the other, until a nice brown without being hard. Serve on a hot dish, and pour over it whatever quantity of the fat is wished.

Boiled Bacon With Boiled Cabbage

Choose a piece of bacon sufficient for the number required. Put it in a pot and cover it with cold water. Skim when it comes to boil, and boil until tender, which will be one hour or one hour and a half. When done lay it on a platter and surround it with hot boiled cabbage.

Jowl And Greens

The jowl of the hog salted and cured is delicious and appetizing when cooked with young spring dandelion, beet, or other fresh, tender greens. Wash the jowl and set it over a brisk fire in a kettle. There should be enough cold water to cover it. When the water comes to boil, skim and set the kettle where the water will gently bubble. Allow three to four hours for its cooking.

The greens you cook with it should be thoroughly washed through several waters, and added in time to cook through and be perfectly done by the time the jowl is cooked. If you use cabbage as the vegetable, or turnips, or young dandelions, or young beets, allow for their cooking an hour at least; two hours is better. For potatoes allow half or threequarters of an hour. Cut the cabbage into quarters, and examine it closely for creeping things.

Pork And Beans

Soak a quart of white beans overnight. Next morning drain off the water, cover with fresh water and bring to boil. Pour off this water, cover again with cold water, and add a square piece of pork weighing about half a pound. Score the skin of the pork before putting it in with the beans. Boil slowly until the beans are growing soft, then stir in a heaping tablespoon of brown sugar or a half of a small cup of molasses. Put all in a drippingpan, with the pork in the centre, and bake an hour or more, till the top of the beans has a brown crust

How To Cure Hams

After they are thoroughly cold and free from animal heat, pack the hams in a barrel or cask, laying them skinside down. Make carefully the following brine: Weigh out twenty pounds of coarse salt, two pounds of sugar or two quarts of New Orleans molasses, and half a pound of saltpetre. Measure fourteen gallons of water. Put all in the big kettle or washboiler you wish to make the brine in, set over the fire, and when the scum begins to rise begin to skim.

By the time the brine boils you will have it clear. When it has boiled a few minutes, set it off the fire to become cold. After the hams have lain in the brine from three to six weeks you will want to smoke them. If you have no smokehouse, improvise one by getting a barrel or, if a barrel is not large enough, a hogshead. Across its bottom nail poles, and on the poles string your hams, having tied a cord loop into each. Take an old iron pot half full of ashes and build a fire of green hickory chips or of corncobs in it.

Don't have more than a double handful of fuel, for you must avoid heat. Smoke is what you want, not heat. To make the fire put live coals on the ashes, and then lay on the coals your cobs or chips. The fire must smoulder and smoke, not burn to make heat which would cook and spoil your hams. Set the pot of smudge on the ground, and over it the hogshead, upside down, with the hams hanging from its bottom. If smoke leaks from the hogshead cover it with things you have at hand papers, old carpets, etc. When the hams are sufficiently smoked, put each one in a paper sack or in cloth bags. To rub the flesh side and the end of the leg with black, cayenne or red pepper before smoking is thought by some to be a preventive against the attack of insects and to save putting the hams in bags.

How To Boil A Ham

First wash and scrape the ham and soak it all night in plenty of cold water. In the morning put it in a kettle and cover it with cold water. You may add if you wish a tablespoon of brown sugar, a sprig of thyme, and a few allspice, but many prefer the ham cooked in water to which no flavor has been added. When the water begins to boil, skim and set the kettle on the Back of the stove where the water will boil gently.

In this way let it boil five or six hours, when the ham will be well cooked. Tip it from the kettle, or lift it out to an earthen jar or wooden bowl, and leave the ham in the liquor in which it was boiled, to get cold. Then take off the skin and cover with rasped breadcrumbs.