Wiltshire Bacon
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the bacon
Sprinkle each flitch of bacon with salt and let the blood drain off for 24 hours.
Mix the sugar, coarse sea salt, saltpetre, and coarse salt together.
Rub the mixture well on the bacon, turning and wetting it daily for a month.
Dry and smoke
Hang the bacon to dry and then smoke it for 10 days.
For larding and braising, rub the fattest part of the pork with 1 lb of pounded salt for every 10 lbs of pork.
Stack the pieces on boards, place another board on top, and weigh it down.
Leave it in a dry, cool place for about a month, then hang it up to dry without smoking.
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
- Coarse salt
- Draws out moisture and preserves the meat by curing it.
- Saltpetre
- Helps preserve the meat and gives cured bacon its characteristic colour.
- Coarse sugar
- Balances the saltiness and adds mild sweetness to the cure.
The step that matters
Rubbing the cure in daily. The cure must reach evenly through the meat. Uneven rubbing or skipping days leaves spots under-salted, which allows spoilage. Turning the pieces ensures every surface is covered.
“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
Tomato Soup526 recipes
Brown Bread461 recipes
Mutton Broth292 recipes
Yorkshire Pudding264 recipesThe free Flavor Lab newsletter: one surprising pairing a week and the molecular reason it works, in 60 seconds. No spam, unsubscribe anytime.
Prefer an account? Create a free account to save pairings and unlock the full chemistry.