Sweet Pickle for Hams

Lake Wakatip Mail, Issue 2089, 24 January 1896, Page 4

Sweet Pickle for Hams

The first thing to be looked after is to get your hams salt enough to keep well and not so Salt as to make them hard and injure their flavor. Make your brine just strong enough to float an egg. M Then stir in enough sugar or New f; leans molasses to give it a rather sweetish taste, and in every six gallons of ithe pickle dissolve from two to ttyree ounces of saltpetre. Stir up your fickle ajid skim off all impurities before using it. Keep the hams weighted dow# and covered with this pickle for;from four to seven weeks, depending off* their size and the temperature of the weather. In mild weather small h&ms will be salt enough in three weeks, 1 but in a freezing temperature no exact time can be indicated in advance. Small and large sizes should.&e pickled separately; otherwise some WIH be too salt and some too fresh. Persons experienced in the business can tell pretty accurately, from their appearance when the hams are salt enough to be taken out lon smoking, but where there is doubt it is well to cut one and see that the salt haft gone into ithe bone. Smoke with hickorjrt i wood or corncobs. Never salt any part of the bog until the animal heat is all | out of Ue carcase.