Half an ounce of pearl-ash added to the other articles will make the meat more tender, but many persons thinks it injures the taste.
The meat must always be kept completely immersed in the brine. To effect this a heavy board should be laid upon it.
The best part for this purpose is the round, which you must desire the butcher to cut into four pieces. Wash the meat and dry it well in a cloth. Grind or beat to powder an equal quantity of cloves and allspice, and having mixed them together, rub them well into the beef with your hand. The spice will be found a great improvement both to the taste and smell of the meat. Have ready a pickle made precisely as that in the preceding article. Boil and skim it, and (the meat having been thoroughly rubbed all over with the spice) pour on the pickle, as before directed. Keep the beef in the pickle at least six weeks, and then smoke it about three weeks.
Smoked beef is brought on the tea-table either shaved into thin chips without cooking, or chipped and fried with a little butter in a skillet, and served up hot.
This receipt for dried or smoked beef will answer equally well for venison ham, which is also used as a relish at the tea-table.
Mutton hams may be prepared in the same way.
Take a good piece of a round of beef, and cut off all the fat. Rub the lean well with salt, and let it lie two days. Then put it into a jar, and add to it a little water in the proportion of half a pint to three pounds of meat. Cover the jar as closely as possible, (the best cover will be a coarse paste or dough) and set it in a slow oven, or in a vessel of boiling water for about four hours. Then drain off all the gravy and set the meat before the fire that all the moisture may be drawn out. Pull or cut it to pieces and pound it for a long time in a mortar with pepper, allspice, cloves, mace, nutmeg, and oiled fresh butter, adding these ingredients gradually, and moistening it with a little of the gravy. You must pound it to a fine paste, or till it becomes of the consistence of cream, cheese.
Put it into potting cans, and cover it an inch thick with fresh butter that has been melted, skimmed, and strained. Tie a leather over each pot, and keep them closely covered. Set them in a dry place.