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Vinegar, Pickles, and Pickling: Bring
Bring to a boil a solution of 2 ounces of saltpeter in 4 gallons of water and with a large fork having a long wooden handle, or a piece of wire having a hook at the end, immerse the pieces of meat for half a minute each in the boiling solution.
Or the same result may be obtained by pouring the pickling liquid while scalding hot over the meat; but the former method is to be preferred.
CURING HAMS, TONGUES, AND BACON Pickling Mutton Hams. -First rub the hams with a mixture of 1 pound of salt, 1 ounce of saltpeter, and 1 ounce of sugar. Hang up for 24 or 48 hours to drain. Cover with a solution of about pound of salt to 2 gallons of water, and let stand for 2 or 3 weeks. Pack closely in tubs or barrels and for each barrel, or 100 pounds, prepare a pickle by dissolving 6 pounds of coarse fine salt, 2 ounces of saltpeter, 2 ounces of soda, 1 pint of molasses, and 1 pound of brown sugar in 6 gallons of pure soft water.
Pickling Tongues. - After trimming off the roots, with the exception of a little of the fat, rub the cut surface with a mixture of 1 pound of salt and 1 ounce of saltpeter. Sprinkle with the same and let drain for 48 hours. Now prepare a pickle by dissolving in 1 gallon of soft water 2 1/2 pounds of bay salt, 2 ounces of saltpeter, and 1 pound of brown sugar. Bring to a boil over a slow fire, skimming constantly, and immerse the tongues in this. Or mix 1 tablespoonful of salt, 1 tablespoonful of brown sugar and 2 tablespoonfuls of saltpeter to each tongue. Rub this well into the tongues twice a day for a week and let them stand in the brine. At the end of this time, add 1 additional tablespoonful of salt for each tongue and rub the pickle into them once a day for a week or 10 days.
This is a set of nineteenth-century brine-curing procedures for mutton hams and tongues, and it cannot be followed safely today. The problems are not stylistic; the curing agent is unmeasurable at these dilutions, several quantities are corrupt, and nothing in the process reaches a temperature that kills pathogens.
- Saltpetre is out of rangePotassium nitrate is rarely used as a stand-alone domestic curing agent today, and the amounts here — 2 ounces to a barrel, 2 tablespoonfuls per tongue — bear no relation to modern nitrate/nitrite limits, which are expressed in parts per million and depend on the exact weight of meat. Modern practice favours pre-blended cures because nitrate cannot be dosed reliably by the spoonful.
- The controlling risk is botulismAnaerobic, salted, un-refrigerated meat is the classic environment for Clostridium botulinum. Curing salts are what suppress it, and they only do so at a verified concentration for a verified weight of meat over a verified time. None of those three numbers is reliable here.
- No temperature is given anywhereWeeks in brine "let stand" assumes a cold larder in a cold season. The text never states a holding temperature, and at anything approaching room temperature the meat spoils long before the cure penetrates.
- The quantities are internally broken"24 pounds of bay salt" in 1 gallon of water is some eight times what the water can dissolve and is presumably a typesetting error for a much smaller figure. Elsewhere the book calls for "pound of salt to 2 gallons" with the fraction dropped, and "6 pounds of coarse fine salt" is self-contradictory. A cure with missing fractions is not a cure.
- The half-minute dip does nothingImmersing pieces of meat for thirty seconds in boiling brine, or scalding them with hot pickle, affects the surface only. The text says merely that dipping "is to be preferred" without saying why; whatever the intent, it does not pasteurise the meat and does not substitute for a safe cure.
- Terms, for reading rather than doingBay salt is coarse solar-evaporated sea salt; "soda" in recipes of this kind is usually washing soda (sodium carbonate) or occasionally bicarbonate, and is not itself a curing agent; a mutton ham is the hind leg of a sheep, cured like pork. Soft water means water low in calcium and magnesium.
- If you want to cure meatUse a current recipe from a food-safety authority or a modern charcuterie text, with weighed cure, weighed meat and a measured temperature throughout.
Curing was the ordinary alternative to refrigeration, and books of household "discoveries" like this one collected brine formulas alongside recipes for ink and furniture polish because all of them were things a household made rather than bought. Mutton hams belong to a British and Scottish tradition of treating a sheep's leg exactly as one would a pig's, common where sheep were the practical meat animal; salted tongues, similarly, were a way of using a cut that spoils quickly and rewards long brining. Saltpetre had been used in meat curing for centuries before anyone understood why it worked — the nitrate is reduced by bacteria to nitrite, which fixes the pink colour and inhibits spoilage organisms. The nitrate-to-nitrite chemistry was only established around the turn of the twentieth century, and nitrite's specific role in suppressing botulism was not worked out until well into that century — which is why recipes of this vintage hand out saltpetre by the tablespoon with no sense that the dose is the whole point.