The first operation in curing is to distribute a small quantity of salt all over the meat to be cured. If allowed to remain about forty-eight hours the blood remaining in the meat will have become dissolved, and will have exuded from the carcase. This liquid should be thrown away. A mixture in the proportion of 4 lbs. salt, 1 lb. coarse brown sugar, 1 oz. saltpetre, 1/4 oz. bay salt, and 1/4 oz. salt prunell should be prepared, and a portion of it be applied to all parts of the meat and particularly in the pocket hole, if the shoulder blade has been drawn. This should be continued for from twenty to thirty days, according to the thickness of the meat and the degree of saltness desired. In one or two districts of a limited area it is usual to rub the meat somewhat violently with a large pebble when applying the salt mixture, the alleged object being to rub in the salt; but for this there is not the slightest necessity as the result of the rubbing is nil, since the salt will penetrate the meat equally as well without the manipulation as with it. The principal point is to secure the distribution of the salt to every part of the meat so that the salt can penetrate and preserve it.
When sufficiently cured the meat should be hung up and dried. If it be desired to have it smoked this is best done at the village bakery or smoke drying house. Smoking of hams and bacon is possible on a small scale with the aid of a smoke oven such as supplied by Messrs. Douglas and Sons of Putney, but it is, as a rule, cheaper and less troublesome to send the meat to the village smoking house. It will be advisable to brand or otherwise mark each piece of cured meat sent to be smoked, as the return of the same pieces is thus assured.
Where the home curing of bacon and hams is followed, this is best carried out from the middle of October to the end of March; if it be attempted earlier or later a cold chamber is necessary.
The manufacture of salt pork is carried on all the year through as the meat is usually kept in the brine, where it will keep perfectly good for a considerable time providing it is perfectly sweet when first placed in the brine. To secure this it is advisable to have the pig killed in the evening, covered over with a cloth to prevent the flies approaching it, and hanging it in a cool place so that all the natural heat has escaped ere it is cut up and placed in the pickle pot. It may be advisable to note that the last is only possible with a small pig during the hot weather. In the mere salting of pork it is usual to use only salt and saltpetre. The use of sugar should be avoided in the summer, as its use is likely to result in fermentation in hot weather.
There are two other points in connection with bacon curing on which a change of opinion has taken place, or is taking place. These are the cause of what are called in the trade "seedy bellies," and the effect on the bacon of the female fat pig being in a state of œstrum when it is slaughtered. Until quite recently the first of these troubles, and it is a most serious one to the trade, was generally considered to be due to the second. It was believed by curers that the slight inflammation noticeable in the mammary glands of the female pig when she is in heat resulted in these so-called "seedy bellies" if the pig was in that condition when she was slaughtered. This belief may have been either the cause or the result, or both, of the common saying that the meat of a sow pig killed when it was in heat will not take the salt properly, and that it is therefore advisable to wait until this natural condition has passed away before the pig is slaughtered. This contention has been one of the arguments used when the spaying of sow pigs has been advocated. Of late years comparatively few sow pigs have been spayed, so that the unspayed fat pigs have been nearly as numerous as those male pigs which have been castrated, and as the sow pigs come in heat each three weeks, and continue so for from three to five days, a very considerable proportion of them must be in heat when they are slaughtered at the large bacon-curing factories, without any loss resulting. We may, therefore, assume that it matters little whether the pig be in heat or not when it is slaughtered unless the seedy bellies result.
On this point also the verdict is against the common belief, as Messrs. Mackenzie and Marsh have carried out a series of investigations at Cambridge which clearly proved that seedy bellies were equally as common when the sow pigs were not in heat and when they were; but that the discoloration which resembles numbers of small spots of colour varying from dark blue to light red in the mammary glands is merely an excess of pigment, the darker shade being common in pigs with dark coloured hair and skin such as the Large Blacks, Berkshires, etc., and the lighter shade in pigs of the Tamworth breed. In the bacon manufactured from pigs with a white skin and white hair there is no discoloration or seedy bellies.
Although it has been generally considered by bacon curers that pigs of a white colour were preferable for their trade, and this to such an extent that some of the bacon curers in Ireland will pay a slightly higher price for a pig with a white skin, the preference was generally considered to be due to the more presentable appearance of a side of bacon from a white than from a black pig; it would appear that in the future a still greater preference will be observable when it becomes generally known that the bacon made from white pigs is free from seedy bellies.
