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Virginia Mode of Curing Hams
Put a teaspoonful of saltpetre on the fleshy side of each ham, salt not too heavily for five weeks; if the weather is freezing cold, six weeks; then brush the hams well and rub them with hickory ashes. Let them stay for one week, then hang and smoke them for six weeks with green hickory chips. After brushing, pack them in hickory ashes in a bulk. -Mrs. P. C. M., in "Housekeeping in Old Virginia."
This is a dry-cure and cold-smoke procedure for whole fresh hams, written for a period when a cool cellar and hard winters did the work that refrigeration does now. It cannot be followed safely as printed.
- No measured cure"Salt not too heavily" and "a teaspoonful of saltpetre" give no weight of meat, no weight of salt, and no nitrate concentration. Safe dry curing depends on a measured ratio of cure to green weight of the ham; without it the interior may never reach a salt level that inhibits bacterial growth.
- Saltpetre out of rangePotassium nitrate is little used in household curing today, and an unmeasured teaspoon per ham is not a controlled dose. Modern curing generally relies on pre-blended nitrite mixes at limited concentrations precisely because eyeballing nitrate is unreliable in both directions.
- Temperature is assumed, not statedThe instruction "if the weather is freezing cold, six weeks" is the only nod to temperature in the whole method. Dry curing requires the meat to be held in a narrow cold range for the entire cure; a warm spell during those five to six weeks puts the ham in the danger zone with no cure yet established.
- Cold smoking is not cookingSix weeks of green hickory smoke adds surface antimicrobial compounds and flavour but never brings the ham near a safe internal temperature. The meat's safety rests entirely on the salt and nitrate step that this recipe does not quantify.
- Hickory ashesWood ash is strongly alkaline and was most likely used here as a moisture-absorbing, insect-deterring packing medium. It should not be relied on as a preservative, and does nothing to compensate for an under-salted ham.
- Botulism and trichinellaThe two specific risks in unmeasured home ham curing are Clostridium botulinum in the deep muscle near the bone, which nitrite is meant to control, and trichinella in pork that is neither frozen to schedule nor cooked. Neither is addressed here.
- If you want a Virginia hamBuy one from a producer working under inspection, or follow a current curing recipe that states green weight, cure percentage, holding temperature and target water activity.
"Housekeeping in Old Virginia," edited by Marion Cabell Tyree and first published in 1879, was a compilation of contributions from Virginia housewives, and this entry carries its contributor's initials in the manner of that book. Virginia country hams belong to a broader Upland South tradition of salt-cured, hickory-smoked, long-aged pork, of which Smithfield became the best-known name; the type was generally sustained by farm households slaughtering in the first hard cold of winter and relying on the weather itself as refrigeration. The reappearance of this text in a later compilation suggests how freely such collections borrowed from earlier regional books.