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PORK, PICKLED (another way)
Every part of the pig which is thin and streaky may be converted into pickled pork, but the fillet and breasts are the portions best suited for this purpose. Cut the meat into pieces, and put these on a layer of crushed salt at the bottom of an earthen pan, packing them as closely as possible. Cover with a mixture of fifteen parts of salt and one of saltpetre. Lay on the top a cloth folded in four, and above the cloth a round board bearing several heavy stones. If the pork is wanted for immediate use, remove it at the end of five or six days; but if it is wished to preserve it for a considerable time, let it remain longer in salt.
This is a dry salt cure held at room temperature with saltpetre, and it is written in ratios rather than measured amounts. That combination is the reason it cannot be followed today.
- Saltpetre is not measured against the meatThe recipe gives a ratio of salt to saltpetre (fifteen to one) but never says how much of the mixture to use per pound of pork. Potassium nitrate is regulated as a curing agent precisely because the safe window is narrow, and a cure that only specifies proportions within the salt blend gives no way to stay inside it.
- Nitrate, not nitriteSaltpetre works slowly, relying on bacteria in the meat to reduce nitrate to nitrite. Nineteenth-century curing houses tolerated that lag; modern curing salts are formulated with nitrite at a known percentage so the protective effect begins immediately and predictably. The two are not interchangeable by eye.
- No temperature is givenA cure of this kind depends entirely on being held cold enough that spoilage organisms cannot outrun the salt. The recipe names no temperature and no cold store. Left in a modern kitchen, the interior of a closely packed pan of pork sits for days in the range where Clostridium botulinum and staphylococci are active.
- "Let it remain longer" is not a specificationFive or six days for immediate use, indefinitely for keeping, with no weight, thickness or brine-strength check. Cure penetration depends on the dimensions of the piece, and nothing here tells you whether the centre has taken salt at all.
- Meat that is never brought to a safe temperaturePickled pork of this type was kept on salt alone, for 'a considerable time' in the recipe's own words, before being boiled. The preservation step itself is the hazard: the meat spends that whole period raw, at whatever temperature the room happens to be, under a weighted board.
- The earthen panGlazed earthenware of the period was frequently lead-glazed, and a strong salt cure sitting in it for weeks is an efficient way to leach that glaze. Antique or unmarked glazed vessels should not be used for long acid or salt contact.
- If you want pickled porkUse a current, tested curing recipe that states grams of curing salt per kilo of meat and a holding temperature. Do not attempt to reconstruct measurements for this one.
Pickled pork was one of the great staples of the nineteenth-century British kitchen: cheap streaky cuts, belly and fillet, packed in salt so they would keep through the year and then boiled and served with pease pudding, cabbage or dried peas. The weighted board and folded cloth are the giveaway that this is a dry cure: as the salt draws water out of the meat, the pieces settle and make their own brine, and the stones keep everything submerged in it. Saltpetre appears here for colour as much as safety, since without a nitrate or nitrite the finished pork cures to a dull grey rather than the pink that buyers had come to expect. The vagueness of the timings reflects a period when a cook judged a cure by feel and smell in a cold larder, and when the alternative to salting was often no meat at all.