Kentish Mode of Cutting Up and Curing a Pig
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the pork
Set aside the hams and cheeks for curing separately.
Salt the feet, ears, tail, and eye-parts of the head for immediate eating.
Reserve the blade-bones, ends of the loins, and ribs for sausage meat.
Cure
Rub the pork with a mixture of saltpetre, sugar, and bay salt.
Cover the bottom of a pickling tub with salt and pack the pork tightly, adding salt between layers.
Avoid adding water unless necessary; if the brine does not cover the meat in two weeks, boil a brine of salt, saltpetre, sugar, and bay salt, let it cool, and pour it over the pork.
Place a board with a heavy stone on the meat to keep it submerged in the brine.
Serve
After 3 to 4 months, the pork will be ready to serve as pickled pork.
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
- Pork
- Is the meat being cured, so it becomes preserved and ready to serve as pickled pork.
- Saltpetre
- Helps preserve the meat and gives cured pork its characteristic pink color.
- Coarse sea salt
- Draws out moisture and preserves the meat through osmosis during the long cure.
- Coarse sugar
- Balances the salt's sharpness and adds mild sweetness to the cure.
- Bay salt
- Acts as a coarse curing salt that seasons and preserves the pork.
The step that matters
Keep the pork submerged in brine. Meat exposed above the brine can spoil, since salt penetrates and preserves only where it is in contact with the liquid. The board and stone hold the pork under the brine throughout the long cure.
“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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