When I get food for my family, I just fill out an order on-line, and my husband picks up our groceries (after he goes out to eat breakfast with some friends on Wednesday mornings each week). By 10 AM, I have my weekly supply of food for the week–summer, fall, winter, or fall. I only have to plan what I will fix for the week.
This wasn’t how it was for the MacPhersons on their Kansas farm in the 1860s. In the winter, they had to plan what and how much they needed to plant. Then in the spring, they planted the seed and tended to it during the summer. In the fall, they had to harvest the produce. And then there were the animals that had to be raised and, well, you know “prepared” so there would be meat for the year.
I’m not going into how the animals were “prepared,” but I do want to share a couple of recipes of how hams were cured. These recipes are from a cookbook printed in 1856, titled Cookery As It Should Be.
CURING HAMS.
Pack the hams and shoulders in a cask; a bushel of alum salt to the thousand weight of pork, a tea-spoonful of pounded saltpetre to every pint of salt; let this all be very accurately proportioned; then lay in the pork skin side down, then the salt and saltpetre; another layer of pork, then salt and saltpetre; so on until the cask is full; not a drop of water used with it, as it makes its own pickle: cover it up for six weeks, then hang up and smoke with hickory saw-dust or chips, for four or five days; this is the experience of one celebrated in Delaware for the fine quality of his salt meats. Legs of good mutton are very nice salted and smoked in the same manner; and beef’s liver is very nice also; then frizzled for tea like beef.
ANOTHER FOR CURING HAMS.
To twelve hams of twelve pounds each put three and a half pounds of fine salt, two pounds of good brown sugar, one pound of saltpetre, each piece to be well rubbed with the mixture and packed down in a barrel; at the expiration of a week cover them with pickle made of coarse salt strong enough to bear an egg; if the hams are large it might be well enough to add a little more fine salt to the mixture.
There is another recipe I wanted to share. There again, it deals with something I don’t have to worry about since I just order a small package of ham when I want some and then store it in my fridge.
TO PREVENT INSECTS OR WORMS FROM GETTING INTO HAMS
OR SHOULDERS.
Take two bottles of cayenne, the best quality, in all about a quarter of a pound to about one thousand weight of the pork, and mix in with the salt and saltpetre, but rubbed freely in before packing; if properly looked after and kept in a dry place, there is no danger of insects; if the weather becomes sultry and damp during the summer, a very little smoke occasionally will prevent any bad consequences. When the hams are hung up, if any apprehension is felt about insects, make a thin paste of one pound of wheat flour and three quarts of water; when cold, add two pounds of good black pepper, and a quarter of a pound of cayenne; with this cover the hams well and no insect will ever touch them.
I love reading old cookbooks to see how things were done 150 years ago. But when all is said and done, give me flour, butter, sugar, etc. from the local grocery store so I can make a special treat every once in a while. The rest of the time, I just order my pre=packaged meat and my veggies and fruits selected by those wonderful people who pick out my groceries so that my husband can pick them up for me every Wednesday.
