370 
THE CULTIVATOR. 
man that comes to the city every Tuesday and Friday, 
with vegetables for the hotel, and takes the offal of the 
kitchen, with which I feed my pigs, also took the re¬ 
fuse of the fish market, amounting to one and two barrels 
each time. This was deposited in the lot where the hogs 
run, and covered with soil, a layer of fish and a layer of 
soil alternately, intended for manure. The keen scent of 
the hogs had led them to the heap, into which they soon 
made their way, and feasted sumptuously every day, 
which accounts for their great improvement in condition, 
and turning up their nose at the corn. 
Nov.. 1845. C. N. Bement. 
ON THE CURING OF PROVISIONS 
FOR THE BRITISH MARKET 
L. Tucker, Esq.—The curing of meat is a business we 
are daily engaged in; an art attained by precepts and found¬ 
ed on principles, the knowledge of which is of immense 
importance not only to the health, but to the comforts and 
economy of man; yet strange to say, it is a science about 
which, not one word has ever been written; and that 
we look in vain through the printed masses of the new 
and the old world, for a single treatise upon the subject. 
When you reflect upon this fact, you and your readers 
will, I trust, be lenient in your criticisms on this, my first 
attempt at a first essay on the subject; more particularly 
when I tell you, I am prompted by no other motive than 
to increase the value and interest of your invaluable pub¬ 
lication; to instruct your readers, and to open the eyes 
of the many persons engaged in the business to the mi- 
nutige that must be observed, and the difficulties that must 
be overcome, in order to pursue the trade successfully. 
Ude, in his celebrated book on Cookery, in giving in¬ 
structions how to make Hare soup, significantly says, 
te first catch the hare. ,; It is not of more importance to 
catch the hare to make the soup, than it is in putting up 
beef for the British market, to first get the beef of the 
right size and quality. The quality is found amongst the 
the fattest and best fed cattle you can obtain; and the 
size must range between 600 and 800 lbs., being that 
which invariably cuts up to the best advantage; having 
more prime pieces, both in weight and number, com¬ 
pared with the whole weight of the carcass, than any 
other size we can select. Having obtained the cattle, 
our next care must be to have them properly killed; and 
here it is of great importance to your success in curing, 
that not only the blood of each animal should be well 
and thoroughly drawn, but that every animal should be 
allowed sufficient time to rest off its journey, say from 
24 to 48 hours, according to circumstances, so as to allow 
the fever consequent on driving any distance, to subside, 
before you kill it. 
The business of packing is divided into two parts; the 
first is to cure the meat; the second, is to preserve it 
when cured. In the packing house, the first prepara¬ 
tion that should be made for business, is the making 
of the brine in which the beef is to be cured. By way 
of parenthesis, it may as well be here noted, that nei¬ 
ther Kanawa, Zanesville, or Goose Creek salt should 
be allowed to touch your meat, either directly, by 
mixture with other salt, or indirectly through the me¬ 
dium of brine, for so sure as any of these salts are 
used, so sure will your meat become slimy like fish, 
and be imperfectly cured. The best salt I know of, 
for curing, is the Liverpool coarse sack salt, as it is 
called. The brine should be made for at least 10 or 14 
days before it is required; it should be made in large 
vats or hogsheads, with a sufficient quantity of finely 
powdered saltpetre added, to give the beef that red color, 
which so pleases the eye from long habit; it should be 
allowed to settle down and refine, and when drawn off 
into the tubs where the beef is to be cured, it should 
be clear, and entirely free from any sediment or impuri¬ 
ty. The strength should also be tested, which, in the 
absence of a regular brine tester, may be done accurately 
enough by placing the half of a hog’s head, weighing 
from 7 to 8 lbs. in the brine, which must float perpen¬ 
dicularly , the snout two inches above the surface, before 
the brine can be pronounced strong enough. 
The next operation in the packing house, is the cut¬ 
cutting up of the beef into 8 lb. pieces, about which it 
is impossible to give any specific directions, as the num¬ 
ber of pieces must entirely depend on the size, weight, 
and thickness of the animal. This department of the bu¬ 
siness must be guided by the hand and eye of the practi¬ 
cal tradesman, and directed solely by his good judgment. 
One thing 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 reasons; 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 purchaser, on opening the tierce for 
inspection, a certain guarantee that the meat was hand¬ 
led by a tradesman; and secondly, it will facilitate the 
scaling of the meat much, as should 37 pieces be in the 
scale, wanting 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 wanted. 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 regain 
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 quar¬ 
ter, such as the clods, stickings, and shoulder pieces, 
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 coarser parts, but after re¬ 
maining 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 examined 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 returned 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 alone be the judge, 
for I know of no words to explain the feel and look of 
meat when cured, or when not sufficiently cured; prac¬ 
tice and comparison alone, aided by close observation, is 
the only certain way of arriving 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 as to be understood and ap¬ 
preciated by every person possessed of any common sense 
and experience. First, the finer or middle pieces of 
every animal, it is well known, are much more easily 
cured than the coarser pieces of the extremities of either 
the fore or hind quarter, hence the propriety of keeping 
them separate, as nine times out of ten it is wholly un¬ 
necessary to do more to them (the finer pieces,) than 
simply to place them in the brine, where they will cure 
without any rubbing, while it is necessary to rub the 
other pieces once at least, and sometimes oftener with 
dry salt, in order to extract thoroughly those impurities 
which the lean of every animal contains in a very much 
larger proportion, than the fatter part of the same animal 
does; and it is for the same reason, right and necessary, 
to separate the pieces cut off the extremity of the fore 
quarter from those cut off the extremity of the hind 
quarter, because the meat of the fore quarter contains more 
of those impurities, which must be extracted before it is 
cured, than does the meat of the hind quarter, and conse¬ 
quently the meat of the fore quarters requires more care 
and handling in order to cure it* than does the meat on 
