Cassell's dictionary of cookery

flavour to meat than common salt, saltpetre reddens it, but makes it hard and dry. As little should be used as possible. A little sugar makes the meat mellow. An ounce of saltpetre will be sufficient for four pounds of sugar and salt, and one pound of sugar may be put with four pounds of salt. Sometimes a minced onion and a spoonful of pounded herbs are mixed with the salt — they help to make the meat savoury. Meat which is salted dry will lose in weight, whereas if it is pickled, that is, if it is immersed completely in liquid brine, it will gain slightly in weight, and keep longer. Pickle which is once made can be used again and again if boiled up occasionally, and if fresh salt is put in to make up for loss. The meat should be kept under the pickle, and if necessary a board should be laid upon it to ensure this. The tub, too, in which the meat is cured should be kept covered with a lid or with a blanket folded into two or three thicknesses. Pickle made in the following proportions will be found excellent and very strong. Three pounds of bay-salt, two ounces of saltpetre, half a pound of sugar, and two gallons of water. Boil half an hour, skim, and cool. Wlien the pickle is boiled up with additional salt, it should be carefully skimmed each time, as the portion which would make it spoil will rise in scum, and can be removed. A piece of meat can be kept two or three weeks in this pickle in cool weather. When it has been kept in so long, it should be soaked in water for an hour or two before being dressed or it will be too salt. Pork needs to remain in pickle longer in proportion to its weight than beef. Salting Meat (additional particulars). — The preservation of meat by the process of salting is that which is universally practised in the domestic economy of the British Isles. Long as this method has been known, the mode of its operation has never been clearly explained. Meat preserved by salt, as might be expected, becomes hard and ill-tasted if very long kept- But if it be withdrawn from the salt in a reasonable time, and the water entirely removed by drying the meat in the air, it will keep with much less injury ; and if it be dried in the smoke of burning peat, turf, or wood, the vegetable tar and pyroligneous acid generated by the combustion will not only communicate an agreeable taste, but will considerably assist in its preservation. This mode of preserving is adopted in the case of hung beef, bacon, hams, tongues, and various kinds of fish. Smoked provisions are, however, apt to disagree with some persons, and there are instances known of empyreuma even proving poisonous. The antiseptic power of salt must appear to be a most fortunate property of that substance, when we consider how great a relish mankind have had for it in all ages. " Can that," says. Job, " which is unsavoury be eaten without salt ? or is there any taste in the white of an egg ? " Much better for us would it be to be deprived of all that remains of the tribe of condiments than this one. It should, however, be observed that, according to the experiments of Sir John Pringle, salt, like sugar, is only an antiseptic in large quantities ; he found that a SAL ( 822 ) SAL