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sal prunella. Along the coast and in the islands 
of this county, both the flitches and the hams 
are smoked with dried sea-weed, and, in conse- 
quence, acquire a rich and delicious flavour.—In 
Suffolk, the quality of pork is much inferior to 
that of the forest-fed swine of Buckinghamshire 
and Gloucestershire, and yet the quality of bacon 
is so improved by the mode of curing as to be 
little if at all inferior. The hot pickle for the 
flitches consists of three pounds of white and 
two of bay salt, six ounces of sal prunella, and 
four pounds of coarse brown sugar; and that for 
the hams consists of two pounds of white and one 
pound of bay salt, three pounds of coarse brown 
sugar, four ounces of saltpetre, two ounces of sal 
prunella, a few grains of whole black pepper, a 
few grains of whole Jamaica pepper, and a quart 
of very stale strong ale,—the whole purified by 
heat and skimming, boiled till nearly dry, and 
rubbed into the hams in as hot a state as the 
hand can possibly bear. Both flitches and hams 
are prepared for the pickle by salting and twenty- 
four hours’ disgorgement, and are wiped very 
dry before the pickle is applied; the flitches are 
rubbed, basted, and turned three times a-week 
for four weeks; the hams are basted and turned 
every day during five weeks; and both are even- 
tually smoked either in chimneys where wood 
fuel is consumed, or elsewhere with leaves, brush- 
wood, and branches of trees mixed with litter.— 
In Yorkshire, the curing is similar to that in 
Buckinghamshire, but with less salt and more 
sugar; and the smoking is effected in smoke- 
houses, with wood, shavings, and a few aromatic 
herbs, the fire being made to smoulder and yield 
a profusion of smoke by means of wet straw 
placed on the top. 
In Somersetshire, the flitches are disgorged un- 
der salt for twenty-four hours in wooden troughs; 
they are then wiped dry, and the troughs well 
washed and wiped; they are next replaced in the 
troughs, and are rubbed once a-day for four days, 
with as much hot bay salt as they will absorb,— 
the salt being heated in a frying-pan, and ap- 
plied in as hot a condition as the hand can bear, 
—and the flitches being turned only every se- 
cond day ; they then remain in their brine 
from 16 to 21 days according to their size, and 
are turned on every second day of this period; 
and they are finally hung up to dry, but are not 
smoked.—In Gloucestershire, the bacon possesses 
so extraordinary excellence from superior feed- 
ing that, were it prepared in the Buckingham- 
shire or Suffolk manner, it would be surpassingly 
delicious; but it is cured in nearly the same 
method as that of Somersetshire, with the simple 
difference of preparing each flitch for its first 
dose of hot salt, by rubbing it with four ounces 
of saltpetre, and allowing it to lie three or four 
hours till the saltpetre is absorbed.—in West- 
moreland, each ham is hard rubbed with bay 
salt, and left on a stone bench to drain off its 
brine ; after four or five days, it is again rubbed 
BACON. 
with bay salt mixed with about an ounce of finely 
pulverized saltpetre: and about a week after this 
second rubbing, it is hung up in the chimney, 
cither so as to be dried by the heat without ex- 
posure to the smoke, or so as to receive the full 
fumigation of all the smoke which arises from 
either wood or peat.—In the bacon counties of 
Scotland, the general method of curing is Hen- 
derson’s, modified by circumstances and locali- 
ties, and very extensively substituting the use of 
the chimney as in Westmoreland for that of the 
smokehouse. —A somewhat general practice of 
late years has been to doctor recent salted pork 
with chemical preparations of pyroligneous acid, 
creosote, and other abominations, applied with 
the brush, so as to save the labour of thorough 
curing and of smoking, and to make the pork pass 
for well cured and well smoked bacon and ham; 
but the result is both offensive to a nice palate 
and decidedly hurtful to the stomach ; and the 
practice, altogether, classes rather with the adul- 
terations of food than with its preparations. 
The method of curing and smoking the cele- 
brated Westphalian hams might seem to promise 
the best model for preparing prime bacon; but 
that method does not very widely differ from the | 
Suffolk method; and all the really superior West- 
phalian hams owe their principal excellence to 
their being the flesh, not of the domestic hog, 
but of the wild boar and the stag. A method 
practised and published by a writer in the fourth 
volume of the Magazine of Domestic Economy, 
appears to combine all the good points of both | 
the Westphalian method and the best English | 
methods, and though quite too refined in its 
superadded appliances for producing a superior | 
flavour, is well worthy of attention. “ The mo- 
ment the hams are cut from the hog,” says this 
writer, “they are to be rubbed with common 
salt, then placed upon a flat board with another | 
over them ; and two half hundred weights placed | 
upon the upper board over each ham. Under 
this pressure they must remain 24 hours. They 
are to be then taken up and wiped ready for the 
pickle, which must be thus prepared in readi- 
ness. 
salt, two pounds of moist sugar, four ounces of 
saltpetre, two ounces of sal prunella, a quarter of 
a pound of juniper berries bruised in a mortar, 
three bay leaves, a sprig of thyme, one of sweet 
basil, one of marjoram, one of sweet brier if it is 
to be had, and one of tarragon, also a few pepper- 
corns and grains of allspice, are put into a sauce- 
pan with a quart of the strongest and stalest ale. 
The whole is boiled together, keeping the sauce- 
pan covered for about twenty minutes. When 
sufficiently cool for the hand to bear it, but being 
still of a high temperature, the herbs are thrown 
into the pickling-pan, the hams placed imme- 
diately upon them, and the whole of the hot 
pickle well rubbed into the hams. The brine is 
soon formed, and the hams are to be turned in it 
and basted with it every day during a month, 
ae 
A pound of bay salt and one of common | 
ae Dorey 
