To Pickle Pork
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the pork
When the pork is cold, cut it into pieces.
Mix together the salt and saltpetre.
Rub each piece of pork well with the mixture.
Pack and cure
Pack the pork in a salting tub, sprinkling salt between each layer.
Put a heavy weight on the cover to prevent the meat from floating.
Keep it tightly sealed; it will last for a year or two.
A leg of pork will be sufficiently salted in eight days; rub and turn it every day.
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
- Common salt
- Draws moisture out of the meat and preserves it by slowing spoilage.
- Saltpetre
- Helps preserve the meat and gives it its characteristic pink colour during curing.
- Pork
- The meat being cured; salting it firms the flesh and preserves it.
The step that matters
Rubbing each piece of pork well with the mixture. Salt and saltpetre only cure the meat where they touch it, so every surface needs thorough coverage. Uneven rubbing leaves spots that spoil or cure unevenly, and the daily turning later helps the cure penetrate evenly.
“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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