Oak lops, or the extreme branches of that tree, such as charcoal is made from in the country places; it may be procured in large towns from manufacturers of rustic chairs and garden seats. Dried fern and short grass, the latter being pared off the heaths and short pastures, very thin, and well dried in the air. Beech and birch chips, or sycamore, are used with all fine goods. Peat or bog-earth must be procured on account of its preservative and deodorising quality; it imparts a wonderfully mild and truly acceptable flavour mixed along with other fuel.

Oak sawdust must be from the dry, old, heart of oak trees; the outside slabs will not do, as being full of sour sap. It is needless to say all these should be quite dry when taken into your stock, and kept so, for it will not suit your purpose to have a damp fume in your chimney.

PRESERVATIVES.

All the manufactured white edible salts impart a bitter taste to meats and fish cured by them, particularly if the same are to be kept many months. This is the reason why bay salt is so much used in part, along with the common salt, and if bay salt was less expensive, it would be universally used, and alone. I cannot recommend too strongly the use of the rock salt of the Cheshire mines; it acts similarly to the bay salt, and is by no means expensive.

Foots of Sugar can be got from the wholesale grocers, and is much preferable to the common sorts sold. It is nearly double the strength, and is not so rank and mawkish in the flavour it gives. There is a quantity of it at the bottom of every cask of the West India sugar when first opened. It is preferable to treacle in many respects. To store your goods when cured, and to keep them in the best possible state of preservation, there is nothing so well adapted, and proved by experience to be effectual, as malt cooms, which should be contained in chests and boxes, with little bags of pulverised charcoal here and there distributed throughout. Hanging up hams, tongues, smoked meats, &c., in paper or calico bags, from the ceilings of kitchens, and all habitable rooms with fires in them, is an old, but very thoughtless, custom, for all the foul air in an used room is accumulated near the ceiling.

ON THE
CURING, SMOKING, AND PRESERVATION
OF

MEATS, FISH, GAME, POULTRY, & FRUITS.

ESSENCES.

The following are made use of in the preparation of the finer sort of meats, and are thus made: