Virginia Cookery-book

Jowl affords the sweetest meat to cook with turniptops, the Virginian's favorite dish in early spring, and the same thing may be said of chine as served with nice, bleached heads of cabbage. Use the upper ends of the chine cut in foot lengths for a nice dish at table ; trim off the superfluous fat, but see that the butcher has left a good layer of flesh on either side of the bone ; allow a teaspoonful of saltpetre to each jowl and chine, and rub it well all over the surface, and then drop them into a tub containing brine made in the proportion of one quart of salt to a gallon of water ; place the meat in the bottom of a cask, cover with boards, which must be weighted down, and then pour over enough brine to completely cover. Sausage-meat, No. 1. Take forty-two pounds of lean pork, twenty-four pounds of leaf -fat, eight pounds of backbone fat, ten ounces of black pepper, twenty -two ounces of salt, forty tablespoonfuls of sage, and one ounce of Cayenne pepper. To be good, sausage should be chopped very fine ; and for this end a sausage-grinder is recommended, being an inexpensive machine, and very useful whenever meat is to be chopped. Sausage-meat, No. 2. Take all the trimmings cut in shaping the regular joints of a porker ; carefully remove every particle of bone, and try to pile up the meat in the proportion of one pound of fat to three of lean. The rule is always to have fat enough for the sausage to fry itself, otherwise it is pronounced too poor. Season very highly with pepper, salt, and sage, cooking a little to judge if it is well seasoned, and adding whatever may be required. If you make more than your family can consume fresh, the best way for keeping it is said to be frying it in cakes as if for present use, then packing them closely together in a small jar or widemouthed bottle, and to fill up the mouth with lard, then seal up so as to be air-tight until wanted. Packed raw in small bladders or entrails, or even sewed tightly in cotton cloths and hung in a dry place, sausage will keep quite satisfactorily, and make a nice dish as an occasional relish, especially when fried with eggs. Sausage-meat, No. 3. Twenty pounds of pork, mixed in the proportion of one part of fat to two parts of lean meat, six ounces and a half of salt, four ounces and a half of black pepper, three table-spoonfuls of powdered sage. Let the meat be ground very smooth and fine. If you want to put any away for use some months later add two ounces of sugar, and be very careful that no water touches the meat. To Cure Hams by Pickling. Immediately after the hams are cut out sprinkle the under side slightly with saltpetre, which will remove all the surface-blood, leaving the meat fresh and clean. Have ready an iron-bound cask, proportioned in size to the number of hams you wish to cure, and make a brine thus : To one gallon of water put four pounds of salt, one pound of sugar, two ounces of saltpetre, and half an ounce of potash ; in the same proportions make as many gallons as you like. Boil all together until the dirt from the sugar and salt has risen to the surface and been skimmed off, then pour it into a tub to cool ; pack your pork in the cask ; weight it down with clean bricks or stones ; pour the brine over until the meat is thoroughly covered, and let it so remain for four or five weeks. Souse in Moulds. Three faces and one jowl will make two nice pound moulds. Have the meat nicely cleansed, and boiled until tender enough almost to drop to pieces ; mince the flesh thoroughly after picking every bone carefully out ; then flavor with a teaspoonful of allspice, the same of black pepper, and a table-spoonful of salt. Put the souse into cake-moulds, pressing it in very firmly; next day turn out of the moulds and put the cakes into a pickle of brine and vinegar.