234 
DOMESTIC ANIMALS. 
scribed, must be sprinkled over the flitches, etc., and then they must 
be laid oue over the other in a slate trough, or a wooden trough lined 
with lead, to the number of half a dozen ; in the course of twenty- 
four hours, or forty-eight hours, according as the salt is converted into 
brine (and this will depend on the weather — in frosty weather the meat 
will not take the salt, and in moist weather it is apt to spoil), the sides 
are removed, rubbed, replaced in inverse order, the top at the bottom, 
with a little fresh salt sprinkled between each course, and the brine 
thrown over the whole. In favorable weather for curing, once turning 
and replacing will be found enough, and will not occupy more than a 
week. 
Bacon is cured in very different ways. For domestic use, it is usually 
laid upon a table, and salt, with a little nitre added, well rubbed in, first 
on one side and then on the other, either with the bare hand or the 
salting-glove. Some straw is then placed upon the floor of an out-house, 
a flitch laid thereon, with the rind downward — straw laid above this, 
then another flitch, and so on ; above the whole is placed a board, and, 
heavy stones or weights above all. j*In three weeks or a month the meat 
is sufficiently salted, and is hung up on hooks in the kitchen rafters. 
The general practice of burning wood and turf in Irish kitchens, imparts 
a sweetness to the bacon thus saved that is not to be met with in any 
which you can purchase. 
Another method is as follows : — prepare a pickle, by boiling common 
salt and nitre in water ; mix, for a single hog, of tolerable size, one pound 
of coarse brown sugar, with half a pound of nitre ; rub this well in with 
the salting-glove, then put the meat into the pickle, and let it lie in this 
for two days ; afterward take it out of the pickle, and rub it with salt 
alone, then put it back into the pickle. 
For a mild cure — form sweet pickle, by boiling molasses with salt and 
water ; rub the meat with sugar and nitre — add a small portion of strong 
pickle to the meat — put the meat into this, and let it lie in it for about 
three weeks. If there be any spare room in the cask, fill up with 
molasses — eight pounds of salt; one pound of nitre, and six pints of 
molasses will about suffice for each hundred weight of meat; and will 
take about five gallons of water. 
In about three weeks — less or more time being required according to 
size — take the meat out of pickle, and hang it in the drying-house. While 
in the drying-house, the flitches should be hung, neck downward. You 
may cut out the ham, and trim the flitch according to fancy — nearly 
every county in England has in this respect a fashion of its own. 
You then remove your hams and bacon to the smoking-house ; they 
should not be suffered to touch each other ; with this precaution you may 
hang them as close as you please. Smoke-houses are of every dimension, 
but the smallest answer as well as the most extensive. Before suspend- 
ing the meat in the smoke-house, it should be previously well rubbed 
over with bran. The fire is made of saw-dust, which burns with a low 
smouldering glow, giving out far more smoke than if actually flaming. 
In the process of smoking, your meat will lose from about fifteen to 
twenty pounds per hundred weight — a fact necessary to bo borne in mind. 
Sometimes the hogs are killed before they arrive at full size, and 
