Home › The Principles of Cookery › Russian Polony

Russian Polony

Russian polony should be made of hard old Belfast hams, which are easily procured, and from beef, which is to be prepared in the following manner. Take a small round, or part of a large one, of ox beef, rub it all over with common salt, and scatter more under and over it; so let it lie four days. Then wipe it, and put it into the following pickle, in a deep pan:-- Water that has boiled..... 1 gallon Common salt..... 2 lbs.

Saltpetre..... 2 ounces Bay salt..... 2 lbs. Let it lie fourteen days more covered with pickle. Take it out and wipe it well; tie string round it, and hang it to smoke for twenty days in a powerful smoke, turning it often; and when taken from the chimney hang it in a warm dry room three weeks longer to harden. Take then an equal weight of ham and beef, and cut off all the hard fat, which put aside. Cut up the meat into small pieces, and leave no skinny or fibrous parts in it. Beat each separately in a mortar until very fine, and work it into a stiff paste, being completely mixed, add finely-ground black pepper, and then cut your hard fat up into small squares the size of a pea, and mix these generally and equally throughout the mass. Dissolve gum-dragon so that it is very thick, and work it amongst the meat until the paste has become just soft enough to stuff the skins, which must be the largest you can get, and taken from large oxen. Great care must be taken in filling them, so that the meat may soon be united into a solid mass, which can only be effected by force; the skins must then be well tied up, and hung to dry; they must be smoked for a fortnight, and kept three months in a dry closet.