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.