[1] Office of Experiment Stations, Bulletin 193, 1907.
[2] U. S. Dept. of Agriculture, Bureau of Animal Industry, Circular 108, 1907.
As pork is the fattest of all meats, it is suitable for a cold-weather diet and will probably be found to agree better at that season. For whatever reason it may be, fresh pork seems to be less wholesome than when cured, bacon having the reputation of being one of the most easily digested of all fats.
Young pigs (four weeks old) are frequently dressed and roasted whole.
Figure No. 10.
Diagram of the cuts of pork.
Pork is usually cut for market in the manner illustrated in [figure No. 10].
The back is fat and is used for salt pork or lard. The ribs are used for spare-ribs, and the loin or chine, which is the backbone with its adhering meat, is used for roasts or chops. The legs are roasted, if fresh, or they are cured, by salting and smoking, for hams, sugar being used in the salting process, which gives the name “sugar-cured hams”; the shoulders are treated in the same way and may be used very much as hams, although the flesh is not so thick and the proportion of bone is greater. The belly is cured for bacon, the head and feet are soused or pickled, and the trimmings of fat and lean are chopped, highly seasoned, and used for sausage, or combined with meal and made into scrapple.
To select fresh pork. The meat should be firm and of a pale red colour, the fat hard and white and the skin white and clear. Yellowish fat, with kernels in it, and soft, flabby flesh are an indication of inferior pork.