Part 10

Chop or grind the meat, and mix the seasoning well through it. Pack it in beef-skins (or entrails) prepared as you do those of pork. In the city, you can have these cleaned by your butcher, or get them ready for use from a pork merchant. Tie both ends tightly, and lay them in brine strong enough to bear up an egg. Let them be in this for a week; change the brine, and let them remain in this a week longer. Turn them over every day of the fortnight. Then take them out, wipe them, and send them to be smoked, if you have no smoke-house of your own. When well smoked, rub them over with sweet oil or fresh butter, and hang them in a cool, dark place.

Bologna sausage is sometimes eaten raw, but the dread of the fatal _trichinæ_ should put at end to this practice, did not common sense teach us that it must be unwholesome, no less than disgusting. Cut in round, thick slices, and toast on a gridiron, or fry in their own fat. If you mean to keep it some time, rub over the skins with pepper to keep away insects.

BOLOGNA SAUSAGE (_Cooked._)

2 lbs. lean beef. 2 lbs. lean veal. 2 lbs. lean pork 2 lbs. _fat_ salt pork—not smoked. 1 lb. beef suet 10 teaspoonfuls powdered sage. 1 oz. marjoram, parsley, savory, and thyme, mixed. 2 teaspoonfuls cayenne pepper, and the same of black. 1 grated nutmeg. 1 teaspoonful cloves. 1 minced onion. Salt to taste.

Chop or grind the meat and suet; season, and stuff into beef-skins; tie these up; prick each in several places to allow the escape of the steam; put into hot—not boiling water, and heat gradually to the boiling-point. Cook slowly for one hour; take out the skins and lay them to dry in the sun, upon clean, sweet straw or hay. Rub the outside of the skins with oil or melted butter, and hang in a cool, dry cellar. If you mean to keep it more than a week, rub pepper or powdered ginger upon the outside. You can wash it off before sending to table. This is eaten without further cooking. Cut in round slices, and lay sliced lemon around the edge of the dish, as many like to squeeze a few drops upon the sausage before eating.

LARD.

Every housekeeper knows how unfit for really nice cooking is the pressed lard sold in stores as the “best and cheapest.” It is close and tough, melts slowly, and is sometimes diversified by fibrous lumps. And even when lard has been “tried out” by the usual process, it is often mixed with so much water as to remind us unpleasantly that it is bought by weight.

The best way of preparing the “leaf lard,” as it is called, is to skin it carefully, wash, and let it drain; then put it, cut into bits, into a large, clean tin kettle or bucket, and set this in a pot of boiling water. Stir from time to time until it is melted; throw in a very little salt, to make the sediment settle; and when it is hot—(it should not boil fast at any time, but simmer gently until clear)—strain through a close cloth into jars. Do not squeeze the cloth so long as the clear fat will run through, and when you do, press the refuse into a different vessel, to be used for commoner purposes than the other.

Most of the lard in general use is, however, made from the fatty portions of pork lying next the skin of the hog, and are left for this purpose by the butcher. Scrape from the rind, and cut all into dice. Fill a large pot, putting in a teacupful of water to prevent scorching, and melt very slowly, stirring every few minutes. Simmer until there remains nothing of the meat but fibrous bits. Remove these carefully with a perforated skimmer; throw in a little salt, to settle the fat, and when it is clear strain through a fine cullender, a sieve, or a coarse cloth. Dip the latter in boiling water, should it become clogged by the cooling lard. Observe the directions about squeezing the strainer. If your family is small, bear in mind that the lard keeps longer in small than large vessels. Set away the jars, closely covered, in a cool, dry cellar or store-room.

In trying out lard, the chief danger is of burning. Simmer gently over a steady fire, and give it your whole attention until it is done. A moment’s neglect will ruin all. Stir very often—almost constantly at the last—and from the bottom, until the salt is thrown in to settle it, when withdraw to a less hot part of the fire. Bladders tied over lard jars are the best protection; next to these, paper, and outside of this, cloths dipped in melted grease.

BRAWN (No. 1.)

Pig’s head weighing 6 lbs. 1 lb. lean beef. 1 teaspoonful salt. ½ teaspoonful pepper (black or white). ½ teaspoonful cayenne pepper. ½ teaspoonful mace. A pinch of cloves. A small onion minced very fine.

Clean and wash the head, and stew with the beef in enough cold water to cover. When the bones will slip out easily, remove them, after draining off the liquor. Chop the meat finely while it is hot, season, and pour all into a mould, wet inside with cold water. If you can have a tin mould made in the shape of a boar’s head, your brawn will look well at a Christmas feast.

BRAWN (No. 2.)

Pig’s head, feet, and ears. ½ teaspoonful of black pepper, and same of cayenne. 4 teaspoonfuls powdered sage. 1 teaspoonful mace. An onion minced. Salt and saltpetre.

Soak the head twelve hours, and lay in a strong brine, with a tablespoonful of saltpetre. Let it lie three days in this; rinse; then boil it until you can draw out the bones. Do this very carefully from the back and under-side of the head, breaking the outline of the top as little as possible. Chop the meat of the feet and ears, which should have been boiled with the head, season to taste with the spices I have indicated (tastes vary in these matters), beat in the brains, or two tablespoonfuls of melted butter. Fill up the hollows left by the removal of the bones with this mixture. Tie in a flannel cloth, sewing this tightly into the shape of the head; boil an hour and a quarter, and set aside to drain and cool. Do not remove the cloth until next day. This will be found very nice.

SAVELOYS.

8 lbs. pork. 4 teaspoonfuls black pepper. 1 teaspoonful cayenne. 1 teaspoonful cloves or mace. 8 teaspoonfuls sage, sweet marjoram, and thyme, mixed. 1 teacupful bread-crumbs.

Lay the meat, which should be young pork, in a brine of salt and water, with a tablespoonful of saltpetre, and leave it for three days. Dry and mince it, season, and add the grated bread. Stuff in skins, and bake, closely covered, in an oven for half an hour. Or, what is better, steam over boiling water one hour.

Eat either hot or cold.

TO PICKLE PORK. (NO. 1.)

Hams, shoulders, chines, and “middlings,” are the parts of the hog which are usually pickled. This should be done as soon as may be after the meat is fairly cold—especially in moderate weather. When you can pack down pork, within twenty-four hours after butchering, it is best to do so, unless the cold be severe enough to preserve it longer.

4½ lbs. salt. 1 lb. brown sugar. 1 oz. saltpetre in 3 gallons of water.

Put into a large saucepan and boil for half an hour, skimming off the scum. When cold, pour over the meat, and let it lie for a few days.

This is intended to corn a small quantity of meat for family use.

(NO. 2.)

80 lbs. of meat. 2 quarts and 1 pint of fine salt. 4 lbs. sugar, or 1 quart best molasses. 3 oz. saltpetre.

Pulverize and mix the seasoning, with the exception of the two quarts of salt, using the one pint only. Rub the meat _well_ all over, and lay upon boards on the cellar-floor for twenty-four hours. Then, put a few clean stones in the bottom of a barrel; lay sticks across these, that the meat may not soak in the liquor that drains from it. Pack the meat in layers, strewing between these the remaining two quarts of salt. Let it lie in the cask for fifteen or sixteen days, every day during this time tipping the cask to drain off the liquor, or drawing it through a bung-hole near the bottom. Pour this back in cupfuls over the meat.

If you do not mean to smoke the meat, take it out at the end of the fortnight, rub each piece well over with dry salt, and return to the barrel. If the liquor does not cover it, make fresh brine in the proportion of two pounds of salt, a quarter of an ounce of saltpetre, and a quart of water, and pour in when you have boiled it half an hour and let it cool. Lay a round piece of board upon the upper layer and keep this down with stones. Examine from time to time, to be sure the meat is keeping well. Should it seem likely to taint, throw away the pickle, rub each piece over with dry salt, and pack anew. Pork pickled in this way will keep two years.

TO CURE HAMS.

Having pickled your hams with the rest of your pork as just directed, take them, after the lapse of sixteen days, from the packing barrel, with the shoulders and jowls. At the South they empty the cask, and consign the “whole hog” to the smoke-house. Wash off the pickle, and, while wet, dip in bran. Some use saw-dust, but it is not so good. Others use neither, only wipe the meat dry and smoke. The object in dipping in bran or saw-dust is to form a crust which prevents the evaporation of the juices. Be sure that it is well covered with the bran, then hang in the smoke, the hock end downward. Keep up a good smoke, by having the fire partially smothered with hickory chips and saw dust, for four weeks, taking care the house does not become hot. Take down the meat, brush off the bran, examine closely, and if you suspect insects, lay it in the hot sun for a day or two.

The various ways of keeping hams—each strongly recommended by those who have practised it—are too numerous to mention here. Some pack in wood ashes; others, in dry oats; others, in bran. But the best authorities discard packing altogether. I will name one or two methods which I know have been successful. “I hang mine on hooks from wires, at the top of my granary, which is tight and dark,” says an excellent judge and manufacturer of hams. “They are good and sweet when a year old.” Another admirable housekeeper covers with brown paper, then with coarse muslin stitched tightly and fitting closely, then whitewashes. But for the paper, the lime would be apt to eat away the grease. Still another covers with muslin, and coats with a mixture of bees-wax and rosin. There is no doubt that the covers are an excellent precaution—provided always, that the insects have not already deposited their eggs in the meat. The bran coating tends to prevent this.

I have eaten ham twenty years old in Virginia, which had been kept sweet in _slaked_ ashes. Unslaked will act like lime upon the fat.

BOILED HAM.

Soak in water over night. Next morning wash hard with a coarse cloth or stiff brush, and put on to boil with plenty of cold water. Allow a quarter of an hour to each pound in cooking, and do not boil too fast. Do not remove the skin until cold; it will come off easily and cleanly then, and the juices are better preserved than when it is stripped hot. Send to table with dots of pepper or dry mustard on the top, a tuft of fringed paper twisted about the shank, and garnish with parsley.

Cut very thin in carving.

GLAZED HAM. ✠

Brush the ham—a cold boiled one, from which the skin has been taken—well, all over with beaten egg. To a cup of powdered cracker allow enough rich milk or cream to make into a thick paste, salt, and work in a teaspoonful of melted butter. Spread this evenly a quarter of an inch thick over the ham, and set to brown in a moderate oven.

STEAMED HAM.

This is by far the best way of cooking a ham. Lay in cold water for twelve hours; wash very thoroughly, rubbing with a stiff brush, to dislodge the salt and smoke on the outside. Put into a steamer, cover closely, and set it over a pot of boiling water. Allow at least twenty minutes to a pound. Keep the water at a hard boil.

If you serve ham hot, skin, and immediately strew thickly with cracker or bread-crumbs, to prevent the waste of the essence. Put a frill of paper about the knuckle. Send around cabbage or other green vegetables with it.

BAKED HAM.

Soak for twelve hours. Trim away the rusty part from the under side and edges, wipe very dry, cover the bottom with a paste made of flour and hot water, and lay it upside down in the dripping-pan, with water enough to keep it from burning. Bake five hours, or allow fully twenty-five minutes to a pound. Baste now and then, to prevent the crust from cracking and scaling off. When done, peel off this and the skin, and glaze as you would a cold ham.

Put cut paper about the knuckle, and garnish with parsley and sliced red beet—pickled.

ROAST HAM.

Soak for two days in lukewarm water, changing at least six times a day. Take it out, wash very well, scrubbing the under part hard, and trimming away the black and rusty edges. Skin with care, lest you mangle the meat and spoil the symmetry of the shape. Lay in a dish and sponge with a cloth dipped in a mixture of wine, vinegar, sugar, and mustard—about a tablespoonful of white sugar, a saltspoonful of made mustard, and a glass of wine to half a gill of vinegar. Do this at intervals of an hour, washing every part of the ham well, all day and until bed-time. Renew the process next morning until six hours before you need the meat. Put it upon the spit or in the dripping-pan, with a cup of hot water to prevent burning. Add to the mixture—or what is left of it in the dish—a cupful of boiling water. Keep this on the stove and baste continually with it until the liquor flows freely from the ham as it cooks; then substitute the gravy. When done (you must test with a fork), cover with cracker-crumbs, worked to a paste with milk, butter, and a beaten egg, and return to the oven to brown.

Skim the gravy; add a glass of good wine, a tablespoonful of catsup,—walnut, if you have it,—the juice of a lemon, and a little nutmeg. Boil up, and send to table in a boat.

Troublesome as the mode of cooking it may seem, roast ham is so delicious—especially when cold—as fully to recompense the housekeeper who may be tempted to try it.

BROILED HAM.

Cut in slices. Wash well, and soak in scalding water in a covered vessel for half an hour. Pour off the water, and add more boiling water. Wipe dry when the ham has stood half an hour in the second water, and lay in cold for five minutes. Wipe again and broil over (or under) a clear fire.

Cold boiled ham, that is not too much done, is better for broiling than raw. Pepper before serving.

BARBECUED HAM. ✠

If your ham is raw, soak as above directed; then lay the slices flat in a frying-pan; pepper each and lay upon it a quarter of a teaspoonful of made mustard. Pour about them some vinegar, allowing half a teaspoonful to each slice. Fry quickly and turn often. When done to a fine brown, transfer to a hot dish: add to the gravy in the pan half a glass of wine and a very small teaspoonful of white sugar. Boil up and pour over the meat.

Underdone ham is nice barbecued.

FRIED HAM.

If raw, soak as for broiling. Cook in a hot frying-pan turning often until done. Serve with or without the gravy, as you please. In some parts of the country it is customary to take the meat first from the pan, and add to the gravy a little cream, then thicken with flour. Boil up once and pour over the ham. A little chopped parsley is a pleasant addition to this gravy.

_Or,_

You may dip some slices of cold boiled ham—cut rather thick—in beaten egg, then in cracker-crumbs, and fry them in fat extracted from some bits of salt pork. Take the dry fried pork from the pan before putting in the ham. Garnish with crisped parsley.

HAM SANDWICHES.

Cut some slices of bread in a neat shape, and trim off the crust, unless it is very tender. Butter them and lay between every two some thin slices of cold boiled ham. Spread the meat with a little mustard if you like.

Ground ham makes delicious sandwiches. Cut the bread very thin, and butter well. Put in a good layer of ham, and press the two sides of the sandwiches firmly, but gently, together. Then roll lengthwise, and pile in a plate or basket.

HAM AND CHICKEN SANDWICHES.

Mince some cold roast chicken, and a like quantity of cold boiled ham. Put the mixture into a saucepan, with enough gravy—chicken or veal—to make a soft paste. If you have no gravy, use a little hot water, a few spoonfuls of cream, and a fair lump of butter. Season with pepper to your taste. Stir while it heats almost to boiling, working it very smooth. In about five minutes after it begins to smoke, take from the fire and spread in a dish to cool. With a good-sized cake-cutter, or a plain thin-edged tumbler, cut some rounds of cold bread, and butter one side of each. Sprinkle the buttered sides with grated cheese, and, when the chicken is cold, put a layer between these.

These sandwiches are simple and very good.

HAM AND CHICKEN PIE.

Cut up and parboil a tender young chicken—a year old is best. Line a deep dish with a good pie-crust. Cut some thin slices of cold boiled ham, and spread a layer next the crust; then arrange pieces of the fowl upon the ham. Cover this, in turn, with slices of hard-boiled eggs, buttered and peppered. Proceed in this order until your materials are used up. Then pour in enough veal or chicken gravy to prevent dryness. Unless you have put in too much water for the size of the fowl, the liquor in which the chicken was boiled is best for this purpose. Bake one hour and a quarter for a large pie.

HAM AND EGGS.

Cut your slices of ham of a uniform size and shape. Fry quickly, and take them out of the pan as soon as they are done. Have the eggs ready, and drop them, one at a time, in the hissing fat. Have a large pan for this purpose, that they may not touch and run together. In three minutes they will be done. The meat should be kept hot, and when the eggs are ready, lay one upon each slice of ham, which should have been cut the proper size for this. Do not use the gravy.

PORK AND BEANS.

Parboil a piece of the middling of salt pork, and score the skin. Allow a pound to a quart of dried beans, which must be soaked over night in lukewarm water. Change this twice for more and warmer water, and in the morning put them on to boil in cold. When they are soft, drain off the liquor, put the beans in a deep dish, and half-bury the pork in the middle, adding a very little warm water. Bake a nice brown.

This is a favorite dish with New England farmers and many others. Although old-fashioned, it still makes its weekly appearance upon the tables of hundreds of well-to-do families.

PORK AND PEAS PUDDING.

Soak the pork, which should not be a fat piece, over night in cold water; and in another pan a quart of dried split peas. In the morning put on the peas to boil slowly until tender. Drain and rub through a cullender; season with pepper and salt, and mix with them two tablespoonfuls of butter and two beaten eggs. Beat all well together. Have ready a floured pudding-cloth, and put the pudding into it. Tie it up, leaving room for swelling; put on in warm, not hot water, with the pork, and boil them together an hour. Lay the pork in the centre of the dish, turn out the pudding, slice and arrange about the meat.

COMPANY.

LAYING to your conduct the line and plummet of the Golden Rule, never pay a visit (I use the word in contradistinction to “call”) without notifying your hostess-elect of your intention thus to favor her.

Perhaps once in ten thousand times, your friend—be she mother, sister, or intimate acquaintance—may be enraptured at your unexpected appearance, travelling-satchel in hand, at her door, to pass a day, a night, or a month; or may be pleasantly surprised when you take the baby, and run in to tea in a social way. But the chances are so greatly in favor of the probability that you will upset her household arrangements, abrade her temper, or put her to undue trouble or embarrassment, by this evidence of your wish to have her feel quite easy with you, to treat you as one of the family, that it is hardly worth your while to risk so much in order to gain so little.

Mrs. Partington has said more silly things than any other woman of her age in this country; but she spoke wisely in declaring her preference for those surprise-parties “when people sent word they were coming.” Do not be ashamed to say to your nearest kin, or the confidante of your school-days—“Always let me know when to look for you, that I may so order my time and engagements as to secure the greatest possible pleasure from your visit.” If you are the woman I take you to be—methodical, industrious, and ruling your household according to just and firm laws of order and punctuality, you need this notice. If you are likewise social and hospitable, your rules are made with reference to possible and desirable interruptions of this nature. It only requires a little closer packing of certain duties, an easy exchange of times and seasons, and leisure is obtained for the right enjoyment of your friend’s society. The additional place is set at table; your spare bed, which yesterday was tossed into a heap that both mattresses might be aired, and covered lightly with a thin spread, is made up with fresh sheets that have not gathered damp and must from lying packed beneath blankets and coverlets for may be a month, for fear somebody might happen in to pass the night, and catch you with the bed in disorder. Towels and water are ready; the room is bright and dustless; the dainty dish so far prepared for dinner or tea as to be like Mrs. Bagnet’s greens, “off your mind;” John knows whom he is to see at his home-coming; the children are clean, and on the _qui vive_—children’s instincts are always hospitable. The guest’s welcome is half given in the air of the house and the family group before you have time to utter a word. It may have appeared to her a useless formality to despatch the note or telegram you insisted upon. She knows you love her, and she would be wounded by the thought that she could ever “come amiss” to your home. Perhaps, as she lays aside her travelling-dress, she smiles at your “ceremonious, old-maidish ways,” and marvels that so good a manager should deem such forms necessary with an old friend.

If she had driven to your house at nightfall, to discover that you had gone with husband and children to pass several days with John’s mother, in a town fifty miles away, and that the servants were out “a-pleasuring” in the mistress’ absence; if she had found you at home, nursing three children through the measles, she having brought her youngest with her; if you were yourself the invalid, bound hand and foot to a Procrustean couch, and utterly unable even to see her—John, meanwhile, being incapacitated from playing the part of agreeable host by worry and anxiety; if, on the day before her arrival, your chambermaid had gone off in a “tiff,” leaving you to do her work and to nurse your cook, sick in the third story; if earlier comers than herself had filled every spare mattress in the house;—if any one of these, or a dozen other ills to which housekeepers are heirs, had impressed upon her the idea that her visit was inopportune, she might think better of your “punctilio.”