Skip to main content
Drink

Hamborough Pickle

A pickling solution of alum-salt, brown sugar, saltpeter, and water used to preserve meat.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Hamborough Pickle

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pickle

  1. Dissolve the alum-salt, brown sugar, and saltpeter by boiling them in 4 gallons of water.

  2. Allow the mixture to cool completely.

Pickle and prepare the meat

  1. Submerge any kind of meat in the pickle and seal it tightly.

  2. For smoking, do not leave tongues, veal, or mutton in the pickle for more than 10 days.

  3. After removing beef or tongues from the pickle, soak them in cold water for 24 hours and then drain before boiling.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

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

Saltpeter
Helps give cured meat its characteristic color and preserves it during curing.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and flavor that balances the saltiness of the pickle.

The step that matters

Allow the mixture to cool completely. Adding meat to a hot brine can partly cook the surface and cure unevenly, so the pickle should be fully cool before the meat goes in.

“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.

You might also like

Vegetable SoupVegetable Soup350 recipesRaspberry VinegarRaspberry Vinegar214 recipesBrown Coffee with EggBrown Coffee with Egg175 recipesBlackberry CordialBlackberry Cordial129 recipes