A round of beef of 25 pounds will take a pound and a half of salt to be rubbed in all at first, and requires to be turned and rubbed every day with the brine; it will be ready for dressing in four or five days,[111-*] if you do not wish it very salt.
In summer, the sooner meat is salted after it is killed the better; and care must be taken to defend it from the flies.
In winter, it will eat the shorter and tenderer, if kept a few days (according to the temperature of the weather) until its fibre has become short and tender, as these changes do not take place after it has been acted upon by the salt.
In frosty weather, take care the meat is not frozen, and warm the salt in a frying-pan. The extremes of heat[111-†] and cold are equally unfavourable for the process of salting. In the former, the meat changes before the salt can affect it: in the latter, it is so hardened, and its juices are so congealed, that the salt cannot penetrate it.
If you wish it red, rub it first with saltpetre, in the proportion of half an ounce, and the like quantity of moist sugar, to a pound of common salt. (See Savoury salt beef, [No. 496].)
You may impregnate meat with a very agreeable vegetable flavour, by pounding some sweet herbs ([No. 459],) and an onion with the salt. You may make it still more relishing by adding a little ZEST ([No. 255]), or savoury spice ([No. 457]).
To pickle Meat.
“Six pounds of salt, one pound of sugar, and four ounces of saltpetre, boiled with four gallons of water, skimmed, and allowed to cool, forms a very strong pickle, which will preserve any meat completely immersed in it. To effect this, which is essential, either a heavy board or a flat stone must be laid upon the meat. The same pickle may be used repeatedly, provided it be boiled up occasionally with additional salt to restore its strength, diminished by the combination of part of the salt with the meat, and by the dilution of the pickle by the juices of the meat extracted. By boiling, the albumen, which would cause the pickle to spoil, is coagulated, and rises in the form of scum, which must be carefully removed.”—See Supplement to Encyclop. Britan. vol. iv. p. 340.
Meat kept immersed in pickle gains weight. In one experiment by Messrs. Donkin and Gamble, there was a gain of three per cent., and in another of two and a half; but in the common way of salting, when the meat is not immersed in pickle, there is a loss of about one pound, or one and a half, in sixteen. See Dr. Wilkinson’s account of the preserving power of PYRO-LIGNEOUS ACID, &c. in the Philosophical Magazine for 1821, No. 273, p. 12.
An H-bone of 10 or 12 pounds weight will require about three-quarters of a pound of salt, and an ounce of moist sugar, to be well rubbed into it. It will be ready in four or five days, if turned and rubbed every day.