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Meat (With a cloth Allow handfuls)

with a cloth. Allow 3 handfuls of salt, ½ lb. of coarse ground ginger, ½ lb. of nutmeg, and ½ lb. of allspice to each ham.

Open the shank by pushing in a bit of stick, and fill with some of the ingredients mentioned, mixed together. Tie the shank tightly with a cord to exclude the air, then rub the hams well with what remains of salt, spices, &c., and lay them in a tub. Rub them every 2 days with the pickle which will drop from them, and in 3 weeks they will have soaked it all up.

Then rub the outsides with a little oatmeal and hang them, well apart, in the kitchen. When dry cover them with bags to guard them from flies. To Cure a Ham. No. 2. (Beechwood.) Take 4 ozs. of saltpetre and rub it well all over the ham. Let it then remain in the pickle tub fill the following day, when you must pour the pickle boiling hot over it. Pickle to consist of ½ lb. of bay salt; ½ lb. of common salt; 1½ lb. of very coarse brown sugar; and 1 qt. of very strong ale or porter. Boil them all together for 1½ hour. The ham must be left in the tub for 3 weeks or a month, turned every day and the liquor rubbed over it; after that the ham should be smoked.

When wanted for dressing it should be put in water for 24 hours, and should not be boiled quickly.

To Cure Mutton Hams. (Mrs. Charles, Dee Bank by Murtle. 1877.) 4 lbs. of salt, ½ oz. of black pepper, 1½ oz. of Jamaica ginger, a little cayenne pepper, 1½ lb. of saltpetre, ¼ lb. of the coarsest brown sugar you can get, a little grated nutmeg. Rub the mutton hams over every second day for about 3 weeks with this mixture and then dry them.

This quantity is for 3 mutton hams. They must be cut quite thin like pork ham when brought to table.

To Keep Meat in Hot Weather. (Mrs. Thomas.) Prepare a strong brine of common salt and water, to 1 qt. of water nearly 1 lb. of salt. Boil 20 minutes. Skim well.

To test the strength of the brine throw in a raw egg in its shell, if it floats the brine is strong enough.

Let it get quite cold. Soak a clean cloth in the brine, wring the cloth out and wipe each joint of mutton or beef well with it; but before you wipe them, cut out the kernels or any parts likely to taint.

Between each joint wring out the cloth again, first in fresh water and then in the brine. Hang the joints up.

Next day a sort of slime or scum will have come out over the meat. Wipe this off first, and then, when you have dried the meat well, take another fresh cloth, well wrung out in the brine, and go over each joint again.

Do not, however, apply brine more than this twice or it will salt the meat; but daily wipe each joint of meat with clean cloth, and before roasting go over the meat with a clean cloth, wrung out in fresh water to take away all taste of salt. In hot weather a round will keep some time so rubbed, before roasting, and "eat most tender."

If meat turns green or is discoloured, cut the bit out before roasting, and put into the hole thus made a piece of dry bread.

Take the bread out when the meat is cooked and throw it away; the meat itself will be sweet. In the same way you also put a bit of bread into any fowl you are not sure is very fresh, before roasting, but take out the bread before you dish it.