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Bacon, Broiled Rashers of
AVERAGE COST, 10d. to 1s. per lb. for best parts.
Before purchasing bacon, ascertain that it is perfectly free from rust, which may easily be detected by its yellow colour; and for broiling, the streaked part of the thick flank is generally the most esteemed.
Cut it into thin slices, take off the rind, and broil over a nice clear fire; turn it two or three times, and serve very hot. Should there be any cold bacon left from the previous day, it answers very well for breakfast, cut into slices, and broiled or fried. Poached or fried eggs are commonly served with the bacon.
TIME.-3 or 4 minutes.
SEASONABLE at any time.
Note. The slices may be curled round, fastened by small skewers, and toasted before the fire.
Bacon and Hams, Curing of. -The carcass of the hog, after hanging over-night to cool, is laid on a strong bench or stool, and the head is separated from the body at the neck close behind the ears; the feet and also the internal fat are removed. The carcass is next divided into two sides in the following manner:- The ribs are divided about an inch from the spine on each side, and the spine, with the ends of the ribs attached, together with the internal flesh between it and the kidneys, and also the flesh above it, throughout the whole length of the sides are removed. The portion of the carcass thus cut out is in the form of a wedgethe breadth of the interior consisting of the breadth of the spine, and about an inch of the ribs on each side, being diminished to about half an inch at the exterior or skin along the back. The breast-bone and also the first anterior rib are also dissected from the side. Sometimes the whole of the ribs are removed; but this, for reasons afterwards to be noticed, is a very bad practice. When the hams are cured separately from the sides, which is generally the case, they are cut out so as to include the hock-bone, in a similar manner to the London mode of cutting a haunch of mutton. The carcass of the hog thus cut up is ready for being salted, which process, in large curing establishments, is generally as follows:- The skin side of the pork is rubbed over with a mixture of fifty parts by weight of salt, and one part of saltpetre in powder, and the incised parts of the ham or flitch, and the inside of the flitch, covered with the same. The salted bacon, in pairs of BACON AND HAMS.
The flitches with the insides to each other, is piled one pair of flitches above another on benches slightly inclined, and furnished with spouts or troughs to convey the brine to receivers in the floor of the saltinghouse, to be afterwards used for pickling pork for navy purposes. In this state the bacon remains a fortnight, which is sufficient for flitches cut from hogs of a carcass weight less than 15 stone (14 lbs. to the stone). Flitches of a larger size, at the expiration of that time, are wiped dry and reversed in their place in the pile, having, at the same time, about half the first quantity of fresh, dry, common salt sprinkled over the inside and incised parts; after which they remain on the benches for another week. Hams, being thicker than flitches, will require, when less than 20 lbs. weight, 3 weeks, and when above that weight, 4 weeks to remain under the above described process. next and last process in the preparation of bacon and hams, previous to being sent to market, is drying. This is effected by hanging the flitches and hams for 2 or 3 weeks in a room heated by stoves, or in a smoke-house, in which they are exposed for the same length of time to the smoke arising from the slow combustion of the sawdust of oak or other hard wood. The latter mode of completing the curing process has some advantages over the other, as by it the meat is subject to the action of creosote, a volatile oil produced by the combustion of the sawdust, which is powerfully antiseptic. The process also furnishing a thin covering of a resinous varnish, excludes the air not only from the muscle, but also from the fat-thus effectually preventing the meat from becoming rusted; and the principal reasons for condemning the practice of removing the ribs from the flitches of pork are, that by so doing the meat becomes unpleasantly hard and pungent in the process of salting, and, by being more exposed to the action of the air, becomes sooner and more ex- Notwithstanding its tensively rusted. superior efficacy in completing the process of curing, the flavour which smoke-drying imparts to meat is disliked by many persons, and it is therefore by no means the most general mode of drying adopted by mercantile curers. A very impure variety of pyroligne us acid, or vinegar made from the destructive distillation of wood, is sometimes used, on account of the highly preservative power of the creosote which it contains, and also to impart the smoke-flavour; in which latter BACON, TO CURE. object, however, the coarse flavour of tar is given, rather than that derived from the. smoke from combustion of wood. A considerable portion of the bacon and hams salted in Ireland is exported from that country packed amongst salt, in bales, immediately from the salting process, without having been in any degree dried. In the process of salting above described, pork loses from 8 to 10 per cent. of its weight, according to the size and quality of the meat; and a further diminution of weight to the extent of 5 to 6 per cent. takes place in drying during the first fortnight after being taken out of salt; so that the total loss in weight occasioned by the preparation of bacon and hams in a proper state for market is not less on an average than 15 per cent. on the weight of the fresh pork.
Bacon, To Cure, and Keep it free from Rust (COBBETT'S Recipe). - The two sides that remain, and which are called flitches, are to be cured for bacon.
They are first rubbed with salt on their insides, or flesh sides, then placed one on the other, the flesh sides uppermost, in a salting-trough which has a gutter round its edges to drain away the brine; for, to have sweet and fine bacon, the flitches must not be sopping in brine, which gives it the sort of vile taste that barrel and sea pork have. Everyone knows how different is the taste of fresh dry salt from that of salt in a dissolved state; therefore, change the salt often-once in 4 or 5 days; let it melt and sink in, but not lie too long twice change the flitches, put that at bottom which was first on the top; this mode will cost you a great deal more in salt than the sopping mode; but without it, your bacon will not be so sweet and fine, nor keep so well. As for the time required in making your flitches sufficiently salt, it depends on circumstances. It takes a longer time for a thick than a thin flitch, and longer in dry than in damp weather, or in a dry than in a damp place; but for the flitches of a hog of five score, in weather not very dry or damp, about 6 weeks may do; and if yours is to be fat, which receives little injury from over-salting, give time enough, for you to have bacon until Christmas comes again. The place for salting should, like a dairy, always be cool, but well ventilated; confined air, though cool, will taint meat sooner than the midday sun accompanied by a breeze. With regard to smoking the bacon, two precautions are necessary: first, to hang the flitches where BACON OR HAMS. no rain comes down upon them; and next, that the smoke must proceed from wood, not peat, turf or coal. As to the time required to smoke a flitch, it depends a good deal upon whether there be a constant fire beneath, and whether the fire be large or small; a month will do, if the fire be pretty constant and rich, as a farm-house fire usually is; but oversmoking, or rather too long hanging in the air, makes the bacon rust; great attention should therefore be paid to this matter.
The flitch ought not to be dried up to the hardness of a board, and yet it ought to be perfectly dry. Before you hang it up, lay it on the floor, scatter the flesh side pretty thickly over with bran, or with some fine sawdust, not of deal or fir; rub it on the flesh, or pat it well down upon it; this keeps the smoke from getting into the little openings, and makes a sort of crust to be dried on. To keep the bacon sweet and good, and free from hoppers, sift fine some clean and dry wood ashes.
Put some at the bottom of a box or chest long enough to hold a flitch of bacon; lay in one flitch, then put in more ashes, then another flitch, and cover this with six or eight inches of the ashes. The place where the box or chest is kept ought to be dry, and, should the ashes become damp, they should be put in the fireplace to dry, and when cold, put back again. With these precautions, the bacon will be as good at the end of the year as on the first day. For simple general rules, these may be safely taken as a guide; and those who implicitly follow the directions given, will possess at the expiration of from 6 weeks to 2 months well-flavoured and well-cured bacon.
Bacon or Hams, to Cure in the
The entry begins as a simple breakfast method and then runs on into two long accounts of home curing — a trade description of commercial salting and Cobbett's farmhouse recipe. The broiling belongs in any kitchen; the curing does not, and the points below explain why.
- Why the cautionThe curing instructions call for a 50:1 salt-to-saltpetre mixture with no weights given for the meat, and hold pork for weeks at whatever temperature the salting-house happens to be. Modern curing depends on measured nitrite (as pink curing salt #1 or #2, at a fixed percentage of meat weight) and a controlled temperature near 36-40F, because Clostridium botulinum grows in the anaerobic interior of salted meat before salt penetration is complete. Use a current, weighed cure recipe if you want to make bacon.
- Cobbett's version has no nitrite at allSalt alone, changed once in four or five days, with about six weeks suggested for the flitches of a hog of five score. It is not a procedure that transfers to a modern house: Cobbett asks only that the salting place be cool and well ventilated, like a dairy, and gives no measured temperature, no meat weight and no salt weight.
- The broiling itself is straightforwardThin slices of streaky bacon, rind removed, over a clear fire for three or four minutes with two or three turns. A ridged grill pan or a heavy skillet over medium heat gives the same result; a broiler set high works but the fat spatters.
- "Rust" is rancidityThe yellow discoloration Mrs Beeton tells you to look for is oxidised fat, not iron. Vacuum-packed supermarket bacon rarely shows it, but the same yellowing appears on bacon kept too long in an open fridge, and it tastes exactly as unpleasant as she implies.
- Thick flank, streaked partThis is streaky bacon — close to American-style belly bacon. British back bacon, cut from the loin, is a different and leaner cut and behaves differently in the pan.
- Curled rashers on skewersThe note describes bacon curls, rolled, pinned with small skewers and toasted before the fire; the book gives no oven and no temperature. If you adapt them to a hot oven on a rack, expect appreciably longer than the three or four minutes given for flat rashers, and use metal skewers rather than wood.
- YieldAllow two to three thin rashers per person at breakfast, with a poached or fried egg as the recipe suggests.
The long curing passage grafted onto this short breakfast entry comes largely from William Cobbett, the radical journalist and author of Cottage Economy (1821), who preached the keeping of a pig as the foundation of a self-sufficient labouring household — his line about bacon lasting "until Christmas comes again" is of a piece with that argument. The commercial description that precedes it reflects the industrial curing trade of the mid-nineteenth century, when Irish and Wiltshire bacon moved in bulk to English cities, and it registers a real division of taste: smoke-drying preserved better, thanks to the creosote in hardwood smoke, but plenty of buyers disliked the flavour, which is why unsmoked "green" bacon remained standard in much of Britain and still does. The pyroligneous acid mentioned as a shortcut is an early form of what is now sold as liquid smoke. That the book bothers to explain how to butcher and salt a whole hog alongside how to grill three slices for breakfast says a good deal about the range of households it was addressed to.