Ham To Cure No 15 Recipe

Wash the ham clean; soak it in pump water for an hour; dry it well, and

rub into it the following composition: saltpetre two ounces, bay salt

nine ounces, common salt four ounces, lump sugar three ounces; but first

beat them separately into a fine powder; mix them together, dry them

before the fire, and then rub them into the ham, as hot as the hand can

bear it. Then lay the ham sloping on a table; put on it a board with

forty or fifty pounds weight; let it remain thus for five days; then

turn it, and, if any of the salt is about it, rub it in, and let it

remain with the board and weight on it for five days more; this done rub

off the salt, &c. When you intend to smoke it, hang the ham in a sugar

hogshead, over a chaffing-dish of wood embers; throw on it a handful of

juniper-berries, and over that some horse-dung, and cover the cask with

a blanket. This may be repeated two or three times the same day, and the

ham may be taken out of the hogshead the next morning. The quantity of

salt here specified is for a middle sized ham. There should not be a

hole cut in the leg, as is customary, to hang it up by, nor should it be

soaked in brine. Hams thus cured will keep for three months without

smoking, so that the whole quantity for the year may be smoked at the

same time. The ham need not be soaked in water before it is used, but

only washed clean. Instead of a chaffing-dish of coals to smoke the

hams, make a hole in the ground, and therein put the fire; it must not

be fierce: be sure to keep the mouth of the hogshead covered with a

blanket to retain the smoke.