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Receipt for Curing Bacon

This recipe describes how to cure bacon by salting and storing flitches of pork for several weeks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 2 ingredients
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Receipt for Curing Bacon

Ingredients

Directions

Salt the pork

  1. Rub the inside of the flitches with coarse sea salt.

  2. Place the flitches flesh sides up in a salting trough with a gutter to drain brine.

Cure

  1. Change the salt every 4 to 5 days to ensure it does not become sopping.

  2. Rotate the flitches, placing the one that was on top at the bottom.

  3. Cure for about six weeks, adjusting time based on thickness and weather.

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

Pork flitches
Provide the meat that is cured, its fat and lean tissue firming as salt draws out moisture.
Coarse sea salt
Draws moisture out of the meat and preserves it, slowing spoilage during the long cure.

The step that matters

Changing the salt regularly. Salt absorbs moisture from the pork and turns to brine. If it becomes sopping wet, it stops drawing out moisture evenly, so the cure can fail and the meat can spoil. Fresh, dry salt keeps the curing process working.

“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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