FoodNetArchive

The home cook book

1905

Page 66

Presented as published in 1905. Historical recipes may not meet modern food-safety standards. Cook from the modern interpretation, not the original instructions.
The greens you cook with it should be thoroughly washed through several waters, and added in time to cook through and be perfectly done by the time the jowl is cooked. If you use cabbage as the vegetable, or turnips, or young dan- delions, or young beets, allow for their cooking an hour at least; two hours is better. For potatoes allow half or three- quarters of an hour. Cut the cabbage into quarters, and examine it closely for creeping things, PORK AND BEANS Soak a quart of white beans overnight. Next morning « drain off the water, cover with fresh water and bring to boil. Pour off this water, cover again with cold water, and add a square piece of pork weighing about half a pound. Score the skin of the pork before putting it in with the beans. Boil slowly until the beans are growing soft, then stir in a heap- ing tablespoon of brown sugar or a half of a small cup of molasses. Put all in a dripping-pan, with the pork in the centre, and bake an hour or more, till the top of the beans has a brown crust. See also "Baked Beans," Chapter XVII. TO CURE HAMS After they are thoroughly cold and free from animal heat, pack the hams in a barrel or cask, laying them skin-side down. Make carefully the following brine: Weigh out twenty pounds of coarse salt, two pounds of sugar or two quarts of New Orleans molasses, and half a pound of salt- petre. Measure fourteen gallons of water. Put all in the big kettle or wash-boiler you wish to make the brine in, set over the fire, and when the scum begins to rise begin to skim» • PORK 119 By the time the brine boils you will have it clear. When it has boiled a few minutes, set it off the fire to become cold. After the hams have lain in the brine from three to six weeks you will want to smoke them. If you have no smoke- house, improvise one by getting a barrel or, if a barrel is not large enough, a hogshead. Across its bottom nail poles, and on the poles string your hams, having tied a cord loop into each. Take an old iron pot half full of ashes and build a fire of green hickory chips or of corncobs in it. Don't have more than a double handful of fuel, for you must avoid heat. Smoke is what you want, not heat. To make the fire put live coals on the ashes, and then lay on the coals your cobs or chips. The fire must smoulder and smoke, not burn to make heat which would cook and spoil your hams. Set the pot of smudge on the ground, and over it the hogshead, up- side down, with the hams hanging from its bottom. If smoke leaks from the hogshead cover it with things you have at hand — papers, old carpets, etc. When the hams are suffi- ciently smoked, put each one in a paper sack or in cloth bags. To rub the flesh side and the end of the leg with bladlc, cayenne or red pepper before smoking is thought by some to be a preventive against the attack of insects and to save putting the hams in bags.