Virginia Cookery-book

To fourteen pounds of peeled peaches put six pounds of fair brown sugar and two quarts of vinegar. Put together in a plate two ounces of stick cinnamon, broken up, a tablespoonful of whole mace, and a teaspoonful of cloves. Get a tall, two-gallon stone jar; lay in it about a quart of peaches; cover them with sugar, sprinkle some of the spice on top ; go on so until you have exhausted all your materials ; when your jar is full then pour over the vinegar ; tie a cloth tightly over the top, first putting a saucer or plate that will just fit over the fruit to keep it under the vinegar ; set the jar in an iron pot half full of cold water ; set it on the fire, and let the water boil around it till the pickle is tender enough to be easily penetrated with a straw. Ripe Cantaloupes Pickle. (Eastern Shore.) Seven pounds of cantaloupe-rind cut from a melon ripe but not soft. Peel thickly ; wash and drain thoroughly. To two quarts of vinegar add four pounds of brown sugar, and one ounce each of cinnamon, white ginger, and cloves, with the rind of two lemons ; boil the vinegar and sugar together, and remove any scum that rises ; add the spices, and let it boil a few minutes ; then put in the fruit, and let it boil until the sirup looks a little thick. CHAPTER XXI. CURED MEATS AND FISH. To Cure Bacon.— To Cure Jowls and Chines for Early Use. — Sausage-meat, Nos. 1, 2, and 3.— To Cure Hams by Pickling.— Souse in Moulds. — Brine for Preserving Souse. — Mock Bologna Sausage.— Pudding.— To Corn Beef, Nos. 1, 2, and 3.— A Spiced Round of Beef.— To Broil Ham Nicely.— A Stuffed Ham.— To Cure Tongues. — To Cure Rennet. — Prize Recipe for Curing Virginia Hams. — To Boil a Ham. — Pressed Beef.— Pickled Herrings. To Curb Bacon. Pork is always killed before dawn, in order that, if possible, it may all be cut up the same day and put away without loss of time. Use Liverpool salt for curing it. Rub every piece well on the skin, in the first place. To each joint take a dessert-spoonful of saltpetre and rub it in the flesh with a table-spoonful of brown sugar and a teaspoonf ul of black pepper ; then rub it all over again with salt, and pack away in hogsheads with the skin downward, and let it remain untouched five or six weeks, according to the temperature of the weather; for while damp, unseasonably warm weather should be especially avoided as the time for pork-killing, on the other hand salt does not strike in near so well as if the weather is freezingly cold : more time should then be allowed for the salting part of the process. Too long lying in salt makes bacon rusty. The next part of the process is smoking the meat, for which every family used to be provided with a regular smoke-house, whether living in town or country. The meat was hung upon rafters in a house without a chimney (brick preferred), a slow fire was built on the ground in the centre of the room — such as would produce smoke, not flame — and the meat left hanging where it was fully exposed to it for several weeks. When taken out of the packing - tubs, the pork was scraped clean of salt and rubbed well with dry hickory ashes before being hung up to smoke. Great care was taken not to let the meat get heated while exposed to the smoke, and the fire was watched constantly — a careful, trustworthy person being selected for the office. To avoid the ravages of the fly, hams and shoulders had always best be put into canvas bags, or simply wrapped closely in several folds of paper before the warm spring weather sets in. Where th€ place is safe, bacon may be left hanging in the smoke-house all the year, a little fire being made up from time to time to keep off mould and damp, but it keeps well also laid down in barrels, packed in dry hickory ashes. To Cube Jowls and Chines for Early Use.