Bacon, to Cure in the Wiltshire Way
Ingredients
Directions
Cure
Sprinkle each flitch of bacon with salt and let the blood drain off for 24 hours.
Pound and mix the ingredients well together and rub it into the meat.
Turn the meat every day for a month.
Dry and smoke
Hang the bacon to dry and smoke it for 10 days.
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 sugar
- Adds sweetness and softens the sharpness of the salt in the cure.
- Coarse sea salt
- Draws out moisture and preserves the meat while seasoning it.
- Saltpetre
- Helps preserve the meat and gives the cured bacon its pink colour.
- Common salt
- Draws out moisture and penetrates the meat to preserve and season it.
The step that matters
Turn the meat every day. Salt and cure penetrate meat slowly and unevenly, so turning it daily spreads the cure over every surface. Skipping turns can leave thin or unprotected areas that cure poorly and may spoil.
“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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