Name: Bacon, to Make
Ingredients: flitches of pork; common salt; 1 pound saltpetre (pounded and heated)

Bacon, to Make

Ingredients

flitches of pork
common salt
1 pound saltpetre (pounded and heated)

Directions

Cure

Rub the flitches with a little common salt and let them sit until the brine runs from them.
After a week, rub off all the salt and place the flitches in a tub.
Rub 1 pound of heated saltpetre into the flitches.
The next day, repeat with heated common salt.
Let them sit for a week, rubbing them often.
Continue this process for three weeks to a month.

Dry and hang

At the end of that time, dry the flitches and hang them up for use.

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

Flitches of pork: The main meat, which is cured and dried into bacon.
Common salt: Draws out moisture and seasons the meat during curing.
Saltpetre: Helps the meat keep its pink color and inhibits spoilage-causing bacteria during curing.

“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.