HOW WE CURE OUR BACON.

Wairarapa Standard, Volume IV, Issue 207, 11 May 1870, Page 3

HOW WE CURE OUR BACON.

(From ‘ Clumbers’3 Journal.’) la some regions of the United Slates, pig-philosophy is more sedn-1 lously studied than in any part of Europe. Cincinnati has become so famous in this matter as to have acquired the name of “ Porcopolis ” —an Anglo-Greek compound which we may accept or not as we please. Enormous establishments are maintained, in which i piggy is put out of the world ‘ with neatness and dispatch,’ and converted ' into pork, saveloys, sausages, lard, and bristles in a wonderfully short space of time. Slaughtering is reduced to i scientific principles, and economy in all its details is carried to a length never before reached in matters of this . kinds. | As regards our own country, we are not, in general, scientific pig-killers. Pat nearly always sells his pig to a dealer ; and the Irish pig-killers and pork-curerr are not remarkable for the cleanliness of their establishments or the completeness of their processes. Nor are matters much better in England, where the barreling of salt pork is not so large a branch of trade as in Ireland, and where piggy is more frequently converted into roast than boiled. There is, however, one establishment in England of a really complete and efficient kind—a real bacon factory on a large scale. This place, then, where we not only ‘ save our bacon ’ but case it also, is situated in Gloucestershire, within convenient distance from the railway station at Stonehouse. The vear is not very far back when a certain farmer killed his first pig and smoked his first side of bacon at that spot; his place grew, and his operations grew, until at length its extent warranted the formation of a ‘ Limited ’ Company, which started with a capital of fifty thousand pounds. The Company do not rear or fatten their own pigs ; the Cincinnati people are hog breeders as well as pork packers ; but here the operations do not commence until the animals have been purchased at any markets that may be advantageous. Practically, they adopt two plans: they purchase all around from neighbour- ■ ing farmers, who send their pigs on foot byroad; and they purchase at Bristol market, whence the animals sent by rail to Stonehouse, and thence to the establishment in very large four horse wagons constructed for the purpose. In these two ways, something

like five hundred-pigs per week are com eyed In the place—there to bear their hapless fate as best they may. j Arrived at their bourn, the pigs are placed in pens liberally strewed with dry sawdust. When the hour of execution arrives, they are driven, a penftill at a time, through a door into au enclosure. This enclosure is at the end of a long narrow room, the floor of which slopes downward from the walls to the centre, to facilitate drainage. There is an iron bar overhead running the whole length of the room —a cunning bit of philisophy; for, being well greased it allows of the slaughtered animals being slipped along from one operator and operation to another with wonderful ease. A pig—no matter what pig, whether from Farmer Hodge or from a cottager —is seized upon ; he is brought underneath the bar; he is hoisted up by a windlass, and slung upon the bar ; with bis bead looking downward to that earth which he is destined to tread no more; he is hitched by one hindleg , which causes him to dangle in a position equally undignified and uncomfortable ; and then But no ; we will not describe in any detail the manner in which a sharp knife puts an end to poor piggy’s existence ; we will asnovelists sometimes do, ‘ draw a veil’ over the scene. Suffice it is to say that death ensues with (so far as is known) a minimum of suffering. The iron bar spoken of runs continuously through the killing room, the cooling room, the weighing room, and the cutting room, in such fashion that the pig may be slipped along with as little handling as possible. A burner, scorcher, or singer attacks the carcase with an ir m implement shaped something like a saddle, fixed to two flexible pipes supplied respectively with gas and air ; the interior of the saddle is dotted all over with small pipes. The gas and air being mingled and ignited, numberless little jets blaze out. The scorcher holds the saddle by two handles, and passes it over the body of the dead pig, singeing off every hair or bristle. The flame is of a kind which singes rather than scorches, and does nob injure that which is to become either rind or ‘crackling’ by and by. Air, to aid the combustion, is forced into the saddle by means of a small steam blowing machine—an apparatus which of course could not be afforded unless many of piggy’s brothers and sisters are dealt with about the same time. The carcass is then slipped along the bar to the cooling room, which affords space for two hundred; one short bar acts as a feeder to several . long parallel bars, which can be easily filled one after another—like the bars or rails over which hides and skins are hung in a tannery, or herrings in a Yarmouth drying-house, or linen in a laundress’s yard. Here rihen cool, each pig is cut open, and those portions of the interior removed which, though neither pork nor bacon, have still a value. When thoroughly cleaned, these portions are laid aside in separate groups ; some to be converted into sausages, some into chitterlings, and some into other mysterious forms. The chitterlings are at once cooked, and sold to the owners of a humble class cf cooks’ shops; while the elements for sausages are passed on to the curing-room, there to await a further ordeal. The rest of the carcass, after hanging twelve or fifteen hours to cool, is slipped on to the weighing-room, where a scale-beam forms part of the greased bar. The weight is taken, and is recorded on piggy’s back as well as on aboard; on the board, tbe exact weight is mentioned ; but the carcases themselves are marked only as being‘large’ or ‘ small,’ to facilitate after-operations. The neighbouring farmers sell at so much per stone for the meat only, after the inside ha° been removed; and this determines the stage at which the weighing takes place. Next ensues the cutting up. We hardly know how many carcasses one man can cut up in a given space of time ; but the strength of the establishment is equal to the cooling and ! cutting up of a hundred in an hour, j Thus dissevered, the sides of piggy | are sent to the curing room; the blade bones, from the centre of the shoulder, have the meat scraped off, ' and are sold at about a penny apiece • the backbones shorn in a similar way of meat, find a market at a little higher price : the scraps from the bladebones and backbones go to augment the siore of sausage material; the feet are immersed in large stone cisterns filled j with pickle or brine; the chaps, tc I produce the Bath chaps so much ii; favor among many families, are sal tec j in large boxes then dried, and smoked to a rich brown; the tongues arc ' pickled in a separate cistern ; so hj the face—that is, a fair half of the , head, nose, and cheek ; and so are the eyes, which comprise what remain! 1 after the fat chaps have been cui 1 away. ■ The curing room is au immense place two or three hundred feet long 1 with a floor too moist with brine, ant an atmosphere too damp and chilly, t( 1 be altogether attractive. Eeceptacle are at hand for eight hundred tons o ice, a store necessary to keep the placi cool throughout one summer. Thi I mode of salting is more scientific ■ more expeditious, and more eeomimi ■ cal than that which used to be adopted Under the old plan, the sides of bacoi

(or rather, of pig) were cut open in various places, and salt, being'erammed in by hand, was left to penetrate everywhere as best it might. Under the new plan, there is an apparatus by which a kind of hollow needle' makes numerous perforations, and becomes a channel through which brine is-driven into the meat, through the aid of a forcing-pump and a flexible tube. It is done quickly and done . well, the meat being speedily saturated) with liquid brine instead of salt. A ; number of sides, treated in this way, are piled up against a wall, with flat pieces of wood intervening ; and here they remain about ten days, until the brine and the meat become intimately acquainted with each other. A kind of hoar-frost of salt, collected on the surface, is swept oft’; and then we have what is virtually salt-pork, though I not such as English housewives are in the habit of recognising by that name. Among the many advantages attending on these operations on a large scale is, that nothing is wasted; the pigs’ blood is sold to cloth-scourers (of whom there are many in the Gloucestershire woollen districts), while the brushed-o!f and refuse salt is useful as manure. j We follow the pig-sides from the' curing-room to the smoking-room. This consists practically of two rooms, one oyer the other, with a lattice-work floor between. The sides of pork-bacon or bacon-pork are hung nearly close together in the upper room ; while in the lower, a fire of oak billets and sawdust is kindled. . Here the sides smoke away for three or four days, until thev acquire that special change of qualities that distinguishes bacon from pork. It requires care and tact in this process to give to the surface that peculiar bloom that belongs to good bacon The other kinds of cured pig-meat pass through processes differing more or less from the curing of sides in some of the details. The hocks, backs, and bits are similarly cured and smoked, but perhaps with less necessity for great care. The chaps are cured in a separate room, hooked to each other like links in a chain. The hams are mostly cured in winter, and sugar is employed in the process. All this goodly salted and smoked meat is finally weighed, wrapped up, and packed for sending whither bacon-eaters most do congregate, and where rasher and gammon are held in proper esteem. It is an endless source of fun to wags and punsters to discourse about the surreptitious and mysterious compounds sold under the familiar name of sausages. We are told that sausages 1 may be very good ‘if we know the lady that made them ;’ and we hear crue hints aboutpuppies and kittens (certainly against their own will and consent) being concerned in the matter. But our sausages are genuine, and we will stand no nonsense about them. The men and women engaged in this work at the Gloucestershire establishment are required to be scrupulously clean in person and garments, and everything employed is examined to see that it is bona fide and wholesome. The scraps of pig-meat, already mentioned, descend through a she it into the sausage making room. Loaves of bread are baked; the ciuft is cut off; and the crumb, being thrown into a chopping machine, is there mixed with the meat and a certain quantity of pepper and other spice. A steam [chopper, a peaceful sort of guillotine, is then set to work, chop : ping up about eighty pounds of ingredients in one-tenth as many minutes. The stuffing of the sausage-skins with this compound is a curious process. The skin is drawn over the lower end of a pipe, the upper end of which forms a kind of funnel or receptacle. A woman, with scrupulously clean hands, takes up the impalpable mixture, which has been scraped out of the chopping machine witha spatula, makes it into a ball, and dashes it down into the funnel until twenty or twenty-five pounds have been thus collected. The funnel or muzzle closed, and then steam power is omploped to force the mixture down into the skin. And thus there grows a sausage several feet, perhaps yards in length. It is removed, weighed, and cut into lengths, and by a few dexterous twists, these lengths are converted into an equal number of pounds of pork sausages, ■ ‘ warranted to be,’ Ac. When all are i ready, they are packed in hampers of i twenty pounds each ; and there are all the appliances for filling several hundreds of such hampers weekly. Our i three-halfpenny friends, the saveloys, i are treated somewhat differently ; they 1 contain the crust of the loaves instead 1 of the crumb, and are cooked and > smoked ready for eating before being i sent from the establishment. * Then there is a lard factory, with 1 boilers, cooling pans, and all the odds 1 and ends necessary for preparing that : pure white substance, lard, from surplus pork fat and suet. Here, too s are made those pork cakes called t “ greaves,” a kind of sediment fron I the lard or suet, more appreciated b) , four-footed animals than by bipeds 3 And here also are prepared the skins f for the sausage's and the bladders foi 3 the lard. 3 Let no .(me therefore suppose tha , the curing of our bacori'ia a trifliiq -'affair. The managers of this estab .. | liahment tell of twenty thousand pig i being cut up and cured in a year mi

forty thousand .siJos bacon; of two hundred thousand pounds of sausages being made in the same time, with a proportionate (juantity of saveloys and lard, and of eight hundred thousand pounds of salt used annually in tho process. '