Important: Safety Warning
This page describes home-canning methods from before the causes of botulism were understood. Canning low-acid foods without a pressure canner, as described here, can allow the growth of Clostridium botulinum, whose toxin is among the deadliest known. Follow current USDA home-canning guidelines instead.
This information has been left in for historical purposes but should not be acted upon.
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Vinegar, Pickles, and Pickling: Rinse
Pickled Tripe. - Empty the paunch by turning it wrong side out, taking care not to let any of the contents get on the outside. Rinse with cold water. Tie or sew up the openings tightly with strong cord so that the lime water cannot get inside, and immerse it in a tub of cold fresh slaked lime about as thick as whitewash.
Let it stand 15 or 20 minutes, or until the dark outside skin is loosened and can be readily pulled off. Pass through 3 or 4 rinsing waters. Tack up on a board and with a dull knife scrape off the dark surface until it looks clean and has no offensive odor.
Soak for half an hour in hot water, then scrape with a dull knife and repeat until perfectly white and clean. Immerse in strong brine and let stand 3 or 4 days, changing the water each day. Cut into pieces a foot long and 6 inches wide, and immerse in buttermilk for 3 or 4 days to whiten. Rinse and lay down in a suitable cask. Cover with pure white wine or cider vinegar, or spiced pickling liquid as preferred. PRESERVATION OF COOKED MEAT In addition to the preservation of fresh meat in various ways, cooked or partially cooked meats may be preserved for considerable periods of time by canning or taking other means to exclude the air. Meats to be canned are first cut into suitable pieces, boiled until tender and packed in glass jars surrounded bv PRESERVATION OF MEAT AND VEGETABLES 703 boiling water. The meat jelly, or "aspic," in which they have been cooked, is then seasoned to taste and poured over them, boiling hot, until the jar is filled to the brim, and they are then sealed while hot. The addition of the aspic, which is, of course, melted when the cans are sealed, but which solidifies on cooling, not only assists in preserving the meat, but also improves its flavor.
Or suitable tin cans may be used.
The cans, surrounded with hot water, are packed with the cooked meat, and the meat jelly poured over them.
The cover is then soldered in place, a small hole is punctured in it and the water surrounding the can is boiled until steam escapes from the aperture. The opening is then closed with solder. The condensation of the steam inside the can on cooling produces a vacuum by which the sides of the can are made slightly And if at any time this concavity disappears, or the sides of the can swell so as to become convex, it is a sure indication that the contents were not properly preserved and have become putrid. concave.
Or to preserve pork chops or sliced ham for summer frying, pickle fresh pork about 10 days or 2 weeks and fry it until about half done.
Or remove the hams from the brine in April, slice, trim, and fry them until half done. Pack the chops or hams separately in solid layers in stone jars. Let them cool, and when entirely cold, pour over them their own fat with the addition of a little melted lard, so as to cover the surface with a layer ½ inch or more thick. Place over the top of the jar a layer of cotton batting. Put on the lid tightly and store in a cool place until required for use. After taking out a portion of the meat for use, remelt the lard and pour back over the meat to exclude the air. Lamb or veal chops, beefsteak or sausage meat may be laid down in the same manner.
Preserving Cooked Sausage.-Pack sausage in cases, or sausage meat, into a small crock or bean pot about full. Place in a baking oven and bake about fifteen minutes for each pound of sausage, i. e., for 6 pounds of sausage bake an hour and a half.
This page bundles a lime-and-buttermilk tripe pickle with several methods of holding cooked meat through the summer. Every method on it fails modern food-safety practice, and the failures are specific rather than general.
- Slaked lime is not a soak you can do at homeCalcium hydroxide "about as thick as whitewash" is strongly caustic, around pH 12.4 when saturated. It was used here to loosen the dark outer membrane of the paunch, but it burns skin and eyes, and the only guide to strength is that comparison to whitewash; the three or four rinsing waters that follow are not a neutralising step.
- Brine and buttermilk with no measurement, no temperature"Strong brine" for three or four days and buttermilk for three or four more, both at unstated temperature, is a curing schedule with no stated controls: no salt concentration, no holding temperature. Tripe is a low-acid offal, and neither the strength of the brine nor the acidity of the buttermilk is specified or verifiable here.
- The vinegar cover is not a preserving acid herePouring vinegar over large slabs of tripe in a cask does not reliably acidify the interior of the meat to pH 4.6 or below. Uncontrolled pH in a covered vessel of low-acid meat is the condition in which Clostridium botulinum can produce toxin.
- Boiled-water canning of meat cannot workMeat and aspic packed into jars surrounded by boiling water reach 212F at most. Botulinum spores survive that indefinitely; they require the 240F-250F that only a pressure canner reaches. This is the single most dangerous instruction on the page.
- Soldered cansBeyond the sealing problem, period can solder was lead-tin. The concave-lid test described is a real indicator of spoilage, but a can that looks fine can still be lethal, and lead leaches into acidic contents regardless.
- Half-fried pork under lardFrying chops "until about half done" and sealing them under fat and cotton batting in a crock creates an anaerobic, low-acid, undercooked meat store. "A cool place" at the time meant a cellar, not 40F, and the fat cap is an oxygen barrier rather than a preservative.
- The sausage bakeFifteen minutes per pound in an unspecified oven gives no internal temperature at all, and the sausage is then held sealed. There is nothing here that verifies the centre of a six-pound crock ever got hot.
- If you want the dishPickled tripe is still made commercially and there are current recipes for it as a short-keeping refrigerated pickle. Use present-day USDA canning guidance for any preserved meat.
Tripe pickling belonged to the economy of the home-killed animal: the paunch was cleaned soon after slaughter because it spoils faster than muscle meat, and a lime bath was a common way of stripping the dark outer membrane, as it was in commercial tripe dressing. The buttermilk soak was for colour -- the recipe itself says the tripe is immersed "to whiten" -- and white, honeycombed tripe was a mark of quality. What dates the page most sharply is the aspic-and-boiling-water canning that follows: the text's own aim is to "exclude the air," and the swollen can is read as evidence of putrefaction rather than as a warning of toxin. Botulism was investigated in the nineteenth century and named for sausage (Latin botulus), but the home-canning rules that came out of that understanding, and the pressure canner that makes them possible, reached American kitchens only later than this text.