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MONTHLY JOURNAL OF AGRICULTURE. 



done accurately enough by placing the half of a 

 hog's head, weighing from 7 to 8 pounds', iu the 

 brine, which must float perpendicularly, the 

 snout two inches above the surface, before tlie 

 brine can be pronounced strong enough. 



The next operation in the packing house is 

 the cutting up of the beef into 8-lb. pieces, about 

 which it is impossible to give any specific direc- 

 tions, as the number of pieces must entirely de- 

 pend on the size, weight, and thickness of the 

 animal. This department of the business must 

 be guided by the hand and eye of the practical 

 tradesman, and dn-ected solely by his good judg- 

 ment. One tiring may here be remarked — that 

 it is always well to leave two prime pieces of 

 every carcass, say off the standing ribs, whole 

 and uncut, to weigh from 32 to 38 lbs. and cured 

 in that way, for two rea.sons: first, when cut up 

 to the proper size after they are cured, it leaves 

 a freshness and bloom on those pieces for the 

 heading, which gives to the purcha.ser, on open- 

 ing the tierce for inspection, a certain guaranty 

 that the meat was handled by a tradesman ; and 

 secondly, it will facilitate the scaling of the meat 

 much, as should 37 pieces be iu the scale, want- 

 ing one piece more to weigh 8 or 10 lbs. more 

 or less, that piece can be cut off this larger one 

 to a great nicety, and avoid the delay and trouble 

 of tossing a pile of meat over to hunt up one 

 piece from the many, of the exact weight want- 

 ed. .In scaling your meat it is not necessary to 

 put more than the exact weight, 304 lbs. in, as 

 beef, when cured, and put into tierces, will re- 

 gain fully 5 per cent, of the 10 per cent, it will 

 have lost in the process of curing. 



As your beef is cut, the coarse pieces of the 

 fore quarter, such as the clods, stickings, and 

 shoulder piec'^s, should be selected and well 

 rubbed with dry salt, and put into pickling tubs 

 by themselves ; the round, rump, and jump 

 pieces of the hind quarters should in like man- 

 ner be selected, well rubbed with dry .salt, and 

 put into pickling tubs by themselves, and then 

 your prime parts, such as ribs, sirloins, plate and 

 brisket pieces, should be selected, and put into 

 the pickling tubs by themselves, and without 

 being rubbed. Those pieces being the most 

 tender and least veiny parts of the beef, will 

 cure more easily and quicker than the coarsca- 

 I)art8, but after remaining a week in the brine 

 they .should be drawn, and if the brine has not 

 sufficiently stricken, then and not till then, 

 should those pieces be rubbed with dry salt. — 

 The coarser pieces should be drawn and ex- 

 amined every fifth day at least, and if the 

 salt should not have sufficiently stricken, and 

 the impurities be not well extracted, then they 

 should be gently rubbed a second time, and 

 the air allowed to act for an hour or two at 

 least, on the meat and salt, before they are re- 

 turned into the brine; the whole of the meat in 

 the curing tubs must be well covered with 

 brine, and the air entirely excluded from it. — 

 Under a good state of the atmosphere, and with 

 proper handling of the meat, it will be cured 

 and ready to put into the tierces in from 14 to 16 

 days, but of this the practiced eye and hand of 

 the tradesman can aJone be the judge, for I 

 know of no words to explain the feel and look 

 of meat when cured, or when not sufficiently 

 cured; practice and comparison alone, aided by 

 close observation, is the only certain way of ar- 

 riving at that judgment. 



The propriety of sorting the meat of the three 

 qualities as pointed out. and having each quality 

 -cured separately, I shall endeavor to explain, so 

 f8<,Ml 



as to be understood and appreciated by every 

 person po.s.sessed of any common sense and ex- 

 perience. First, the finer or middle pieces of 

 evQry animal, it is well known, are much more 

 easily cured than the coarser pieces of the ex- 

 tremities of either the fore or hind quarter, hence 

 the propriety of keeping them separate, as nine 

 times out of ten it is Vv'holly unnecessary to do 

 I more to them (the Tfiner pieces,) than simply to 

 place them in the brine, where they will cure 

 without any rubbing, while it is neces.^arj- to 

 rub the other pieces once at lca.st,and sometimes 

 oftener with dry salt, in order to extract thor- 

 oughly those impurities which the lean of every 

 animal contains in a very much larger propor- 

 tion, than the fatter part of the same animal 

 docs ; and it is, for the same reason, right and , 

 necessary to separate the pieces cut off the ex- ■ 

 tremity of the fore quarter from those cut off the i 

 extremity of the hind quarter, becau.^e the meat ' 

 of the fore (juarter contains more of those inipu- ' 

 rities. which must be extracted before it is cu- * 

 red, than does the meat of the hind quarter, and ' 

 consequently the meat of the fore quarters re- , 

 quires more care and handling in order to cure 

 it, than does the meat on any other part of the 

 carcass of the animal ; hence this classitication 

 will enable the curer to give to each sort of meat 

 the required handling necessary for its prc-^erva- 

 tion, without interfering with the other parts, 

 which, if treated in the same way, (I now speak 

 of the finer pieces,) would have their natural 

 juices extracted, become hard, and what is com- 

 monly but erroneously called over-cured. 

 There is also another reason why this classifica- 

 tion should be made : it is this : That it saves 

 much time and labor, when the meat is select- 

 ing for the scale, by having each quality in sep- 

 arate bulk ; the selector has but to go to either, in 

 order to lay his hand at once upon the particu- 

 lar piece he w-ants, without losing time or wa.st- 

 ing labor in tossing over a pile of meat promis- 

 cuously cured. 



When your meat is cured, the next process is 

 the packing it away for preservation into the 

 tierces, about whicli I deem it unnecessary to 

 say anything ; because wlien the meat is .select- 

 ed and scaled, the packing is a mere mechan- 

 ical process, in which a man can alone become 

 a proficient by practice and experience. It may 

 be well, though, to remark that when your meat 

 is taken out of the curing tubs, it .should be 

 washed, and'ridded of the impurities extracted 

 by the salt, and generally in a greater or less 

 degree deposited on iho surface, and which can 

 be best and mo.st easily done vvith the aid of 

 water and a good hickoiy broom ; the packer 

 should always have by him a knife, and when- 

 ever he obseAcs an incrustation of tho.se impu- 

 rities on the meat, which the washing had not 

 taken off, he should use his knife to scrape it off, 

 and if scraping did not effect it, he should cut it 

 off 



When j^our tierces are packed, they must 

 then bo headed and thorougldy driven dovvn in 

 their wooden lioopx, rolled by, and each tierce 

 have its bung-hole bored, ami then brined with 

 pure, clean brine, made and tested in the way 

 before described, except that no saltpetre .should 

 be put in it. It is of the utmost importance that 

 this brine should be made several days before, 

 in order that not only the impurities of the salt, 

 but those of the water als<i, should have time 

 to settle down into a sediment, and this sedi- 

 ment slMiuld not be disturbed when the brine is 

 drawn off. The want of this precaution haa 



