The recipe
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the tub
Clean and fumigate a powdering tub with sulfur the day before use.
Place a layer of finely beaten rock salt at the bottom of the tub.
Pack the meat
Add the thickest pieces of meat, then a layer of the salt mixture (coarse sea salt, coarse sugar, and saltpetre).
Continue layering meat and salt mixture until all meat is used, filling spaces with salt.
Cure
If the brine does not cover the pork in a week, boil more of the same ingredients, cool it, and pour it over the meat.
Leave the meat undisturbed for a month for best results; thin pieces can be taken out in two weeks if needed.
Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.
Explore the science
What each ingredient does
- Porker
- Forms the meat that is cured and preserved by the salt and sugar mixture.
- Coarse sea salt
- Draws moisture out of the meat and preserves it during curing.
- Coarse sugar
- Balances the salt's sharpness and adds a mild sweetness to the cured meat.
- Saltpetre
- Helps preserve the meat's colour and inhibits spoilage bacteria during curing.
The step that matters
Keeping the pork submerged in brine. Meat left above the brine can spoil or dry out and discolour. Checking that the brine covers the pork in the first week, and topping it up with cooled boiled brine if it does not, keeps the surface protected while the salt slowly penetrates.
“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.
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