third day for six successive times, when the bacon will be sufficiently salt. Then proceed to rub off all the stale briny salt, and lay on each flitch a covering of clean fresh bran or sawdust, and take it to the drying loft. It should be there hung by means of crooks fastened in the neck of the flitch, and remain for fourteen or sixteen days. The fuel most proper for drying bacon is cleft oak or ash, what is commonly called cord wood.
In Buckinghamshire, as soon as the flitches are cut from the hog they lay them on a form or table in a slanting position, and, supposing the whole hog to have weighed 240 or 280 lbs., take a quarter of a pound of saltpetre, pounded very fine, and sprinkle it all over the flitches, rubbing it well into the shoulder parts especially; they then suffer them to remain twelve hours, after which they should be rubbed dry, and in the mean time seven pounds of salt mixed with one pound and a quarter of coarse brown sugar put into a frying-pan and heated on a clear fire, stirring it well that it may all be of the same temperature. This mixture, as hot as the hand can possibly bear it, may now be rubbed well into the flitches, which are then put one upon the other and laid in a salting-pan or other contrivance, in order that the brine may form and be kept from wasting. The bacon must be kept in this situation four weeks, turning it and basting it well with the brine twice or thrice a week. At the expiration of this time take it from the brine, hang it up to dry, and smoke it, if preferred, which in the absence of a regular smokehouse may be done as follows:—Hang up the bacon in a chimney or other orifice, then underneath put down a layer of dry straw, upon this a layer of mixed shavings, keeping out those from deal or fir, next a good layer of sawdust and some juniper-berries, or branches where procurable, and over all a mantle of wet straw or litter, which makes the fire give out much smoke without burning away too rapidly. This smoking must be repeated three or four times, or till the bacon appears thoroughly dry, when it may be hung up in the kitchen, or any dry place convenient.
In Kent the hog is swaled or singed, in preference to scalding and scraping the skin, as this latter process, it is considered, tends to soften the rind and injure the firmness of the flesh. The flitches are rubbed with dry salt and saltpetre in the proportion of one-third of the latter to two of the former, and laid in a trough, and there each one sprinkled over with this mixture. Here they continue for three weeks or a month, according to their size, during which time they are taken out once in two or three days and well rubbed with the brine and turned.
They are dried before a slow fire, and this process occupies about the same time that the salting has done. When it is completed the flitches are either hung up in a dry place, or deposited on stone slabs until wanted for domestic use.
