370. How To Cure Bacon.- Cobbett's Receipt

The two sides that remain, and which are called flitches, are to be cured for bacon. They are first rubbed with salt on their insides, or flesh sides, then placed one on the other, the flesh sides uppermost, in a salting trough which has a gutter round its edges to drain away the brine, for to have sweet and fine bacon the flitches must not be sopping in brine, which gives it the sort of taste that barrel pork and sea pork have, and than which nothing is more villanous; every one knows how different is the taste of fresh dry salt from that of salt in a dissolved state, therefore change the salt often, once in four or five days; let it melt and sink in, but let it not lie too long; change the flitches, put that at bottom which was first on the top, do this a couple of times; this mode will cost you a great deal more in salt than the sopping mode, but without it your bacon will not be so sweet and fine, nor keep so well. As for the time required in making your flitches sufficiently salt, it depends on circumstances, the thickness of the flitch, the state of the weather, the place wherein the salting is going on; it takes a longer time for a thick than a thin flitch; it takes longer in dry than in damp weather; it takes longer in a dry than in a damp place; but for the flitches of a hog of five score, in weather not very dry or damp, about six weeks may do; and as yours is to be fat, which receives little injury from over salting, give time enough, for you are to have bacon until Christmas comes again.

The place for salting should, like a dairy, always be cool, but always admit of a free circulation of air; confined air, though cool, will taint meat sooner than the mid-day sun accompanied by a breeze. With regard to smoking the bacon, two precautions are necessary: first, to hang the flitches where no rain comes down upon them, and next, that the smoke must proceed from wood, not peat, turf, nor coal. As to the time it requires to smoke a flitch, it must depend a good deal upon whether there be a constant fire beneath, and whether the fire be large or small; a month will do if the fire be pretty constant, and rich as a farm-house fire usually is; but over smoking, or rather too long hanging in the air, makes the bacon rust; great attention should therefore be paid to this matter. The flitch ought not to be dried up to the hardness of a board, and yet it ought to be perfectly dry; before you hang it up lay it on the floor, scatter the flesh side pretty thickly over with bran, or with some fine sawdust, not of deal or fir; rub it on the flesh, or pat it well down upon it, this keeps the smoke from getting into the little openings, and makes a sort of crust to be dried on.

"To keep the bacon sweet and good, and free from hoppers, sift fine some clean and dry 'wood ashes. Put some at the bottom of a box or chest, long enough to hold a flitch of bacon. Lay in one fliteh, and then put in more ashes, then another flitch, and cover this with six or eight inches of the ashes. The place where the box or chest is kept ought to be dry, and should the ashes become damp, they should be put in the fire-place to dry, and when cold put back again. With these precautions, the bacon will be as good at the end of the year, as on the first day."

It may be as well to observe in reference to the above receipt, given by the very celebrated William Cobbett in his Cottage Economy, that most counties in England have their peculiar method of curing hams and bacon, each varying in some slight degree from the other, and, of course, each is considered orthodox. But for simple general rules, the above may be safely taken as a guide; and those who implicitly follow the directions given will possess at the expiration of from six weeks to two months well flavoured and well cured bacon.

371. How To Cure Bacon For Larding

It is of little use preparing a small piece of bacon for larding, for different joints require lardings of different lengths, a piece of beef, for example, will, if of a tolerable size, require very lengthy lardings, as a fowl will require but small ones. Ten to twenty pounds should at least be prepared; take fifteen pounds, and the fatter it is the better, rub it well with a pound and a half of pounded common salt, if in one piece lay it upon a board with another over it, if in more than one piece let each piece have a board with a weight at the top, keep it in a cool place four or five weeks, hang it to dry but not to be smoked.