Culinary Chemistry / The Scientific Principles of Cookery, with Concise Instructions for Preparing Good and Wholesome Pickles, Vinegar, Conserves, Fruit Jellies, Marmalades, and Various Other Alimentary Substances Employed in Domestic Economy, with Observations on the Chemical Constitution and Nutritive Qualities of Different Kinds of Food.

by Friedrich Christian Accum

ON KEEPING OF MEAT, AND BEST CONSTRUCTION OF LARDERS, PANTRIES AND MEAT SAFES.

Larders, pantries and safes, for keeping meat, should be sheltered from the direct rays of the sun, and otherwise guarded against the influence of warmth. All places where provisions are kept should be so constructed that a brisk current of cool air can be made to pass through them at command. With this view it would be advisable to have openings on all sides of larders, or meat safes, which might be closed or opened according to the way from which the wind blows, the time of the day, or season of the year; they should be kept, too, with the greatest attention to cleanliness. It will be better also if the sides or walls of meat safes are occasionally scoured with soap, or soap and slacked quicklime.

Warm weather is the worst for keeping meat; the south wind has long been noted as being hostile to keeping provisions. Juvenal, in his 4th Satire, says:

“Now sickly autumn to dry frost give way,
Cold winter rag’d and fresh preserved the prey;
Yet with such haste the busy fisher flew,
As if hot south-wind corruption blew.”

A joint of meat may be preserved for several days in the midst of summer by wrapping it in a clean linen cloth, previously moistened with strong vinegar, and sprinkled over with salt, and then placing it in an earthenware pan, or hanging it up, and changing the cloth, or ringing it out a-fresh, and again steeping it in vinegar once a day, if the weather be very hot.

The best meat for keeping is mutton, and the leg keeps best, and may with care, if the temperature be only moderate, be preserved without becoming tainted for about a week; during frost a leg of mutton will keep a fortnight.

A shoulder of mutton is next to the leg the joint best calculated for keeping in warm weather.

The scrag end of a neck is very liable to become tainted; it cannot be kept with safety during hot weather for more than two days.

The kernels, or glands, in the thick part of the leg should be dissected out, because the mucous matter in which they abound speedily becomes putrid, and then tends very much to infect the adjoining part.

The chine and rib-bones should be wiped, and sprinkled over with salt and pepper, and the bloody part of the neck should be removed. In the brisket, the commencement of the putrefactive process takes place in the breast, and if this part is to be kept, it is advisable to guard against it becoming tainted, by sprinkling a little salt and pepper over it: the vein, or pipe near the bone of the inside of a chine of mutton should be cut out, and if the meat is to be kept for some time, the part close round the tail should be sprinkled with salt, after having first cut out the gland or kernel.

In beef the ribs are less liable to become tainted than any other joint; they may be kept in a cool pantry in the summer months for six days, and ten days in winter.

The round of beef will not keep long, unless sprinkled over with salt. All the glands or kernels which it contains should be dissected out.

The brisket is still more liable to become tainted by keeping, it cannot be kept sweet with safety more than three days in summer, and about a week in winter.

Lamb is the next in order for keeping, though it is considered best to eat it soon, or even the day after it is killed. If it is not very young the leg will keep four or five days, with care, in a cool place in summer.

Veal and Pork—a leg will keep very well in summer for three or four days, and a week in winter:—but the scrag end of veal or pork will not keep well above a day in summer, and two or three days in winter.

The part that becomes tainted first of a leg of veal is where the udder is skewered back. The skewer should be taken out, and both that and the part beneath it wiped dry every day, by which means it will keep good three or four days in warm weather. The vein or pipe that runs along the chine of a loin of veal should be cut out, as is usually done in mutton and beef. The skirt of a breast of veal should likewise be taken off, and the inside of the breast wiped, scraped, and sprinkled with salt.