SALT FOR MEAT PACKING. 25 



growth, as a natural consequence, will hasten the disintegration 

 of the meat mass, and thus its final putrefaction. 



Practice recommends the use of the coarse and hard qualities 

 of salt for meat-packing, for the following reasons : they dissolve 

 gradually, and contract the meat by degrees to a desirable com- 

 pactness ; they keep the salt pickle within a certain moderate 

 concentration ; they cannot enter mechanically into the meat, 

 and thus overcharge it, and may therefore be applied in a suffi- 

 cient excess, so as to compensate for the losses of pickle by 

 leakage, &c., without endangering the tenderness and the flavor 

 too prematurely. The common fine salt answers for a short 

 period of keeping very well, and is consequently used in the 

 packing of meat for immediate family consumption. Fifty to 

 fifty-six pounds of coarse salt are usually taken for the salting 

 down of one barrel of meat; the bottom and the top of the 

 barrel are always carefully covered with a layer of coarse salt. 

 The coarse qualities of salt which are used in our country are 

 either manufactured from brines or from sea-water. The purer 

 the salt, the nicer is the flavor of the meat. A salt which con- 

 tains large quanties of foreign saline admixtures, particularly 

 of chloride of calcium and of chloride of magnesium, imparts a 

 pungent and disagreeable taste, and injures also the color of the 

 meat ;" for these saline compounds have themselves, both an 

 unpleasant taste, and being at the same time in a higher degree 

 hycroscopic, they cause a more copious discharge of juice from 

 meat, which renders the latter of a paler color, and of a harder 

 texture ; the color of the packed meat is frequently improved 

 by an addition of nitre (nitrate of potassa), which in itself, if 

 practised on a small scale, is a quite harmless proceeding. We 

 are using mainly the coarse salt made from our own brines and 

 from sea-water, besides the English coarse fine salt, and the 

 Turk's Island salt, including that from some other localities in 

 the West Indies. In some countries the rock salt is used for 

 meat-packing ; Texas meat-packers are at present engaged to 

 give a trial to the superior rock salt of Petite Anse, La. A good 

 rock salt is well fitted for that purpose, yet, on account of its great 

 hardness, it has to be broken up in smaller pieces than common 

 solar salt. The United States government requires that the 

 beef and the pork for army and navy use shall be packed with 

 Turk's Island or Onondaga coarse salt. At the New York works 

 4 



