Home Pork Making   By: A. W. Fulton

The Art of Raising and Curing Pork on the Farm

A complete guide for the farmer, the country butcher and the suburban dweller, in all that pertains to hog slaughtering, curing, preserving and storing pork product from scalding vat to kitchen table and dining room.

By A. W. FULTON

Commercial editor American Agriculturist and Orange Judd Farmer, assisted by Pork Specialists in the United States and England.

New York and Chicago

Orange Judd Company

1900

Of all the delicacies in the whole mundus edibiles , I will maintain roast pig to be the most delicate. There is no flavor comparable, I will contend, to that of the crisp, tawny, well watched, not over roasted crackling, as it is well called the very teeth are invited to their share of the pleasure at this banquet in overcoming the coy, brittle resistance with the adhesive oleaginous oh, call it not fat! but an indefinable sweetness growing up to it the tender blossoming of fat fat cropped in the bud taken in the shoot in the first innocence the cream and quintessence of the child pig's yet pure food the lean, no lean, but a kind of animal manna or rather fat and lean (if it must be so) so blended and running into each other that both together make but one ambrosian result or common substance. [Charles Lamb.

Copyright 1900 BY ORANGE JUDD COMPANY

TABLE OF CONTENTS.

INTRODUCTION.

Pork making on the farm nearly a lost art General merit of homemade pork Acknowledgments.

CHAPTER I. PORK MAKING ON THE FARM.

Best time for killing A home market for farm pork Opportunities for profit Farm census of live stock for a series of years.

CHAPTER II. FINISHING OFF HOGS FOR BACON.

Flesh forming rations Corn as a fat producer Just the quality of bacon wanted Normandy Hogs.

CHAPTER III. SLAUGHTERING.

Methods employed Necessary apparatus Heating water for scalding.

CHAPTER IV. SCALDING AND SCRAPING.

Saving the bristles Scalding tubs and vats Temperature for scalding "Singeing pigs" Methods of Singeing.

CHAPTER V. DRESSING AND CUTTING.

Best time for dressing Opening the carcass Various useful appliances Hints on dressing How to cut up a hog.

CHAPTER VI. WHAT TO DO WITH THE OFFAL.

Portions classed as offal Recipes and complete directions for utilizing the wholesome parts, aside from the principal pieces Sausage, scrapple, jowls and head, brawn, head cheese.

CHAPTER VII. THE FINE POINTS IN MAKING LARD.

Kettle and steam rendered Time required in making Storing.

CHAPTER VIII. PICKLING AND BARRELING.

A clean barrel one of the first considerations The use of salt on pork strips Pickling by covering with brine Renewing pork brine.

CHAPTER IX. CARE OF HAMS AND SHOULDERS.

A first class ham A general cure for ham and shoulders Pickling preparatory to smoking Westphalian hams.

CHAPTER X. DRY SALTING BACON AND SIDES.

Proper proportion of salt to meat Other preservatives Applying the salt Best distribution of the salt Time required in curing Pork for the south.

CHAPTER XI. SMOKING AND SMOKEHOUSES.

Treatment previous to smoking Simple but effective smokehouses Controlling the fire in smoke formation Materials to produce best flavor The choice of weather Variety in smokehouses.

CHAPTER XII. KEEPING HAMS AND BACON.

The ideal meat house Best temperature and surroundings Precautions against skippers To exclude the bugs entirely.

CHAPTER XIII. SIDE LIGHTS ON PORK MAKING.

Growth of the big packing houses Average weight of live hogs "Net to gross" Relative weights of various portions of the carcass.

CHAPTER XIV. PACKING HOUSE CUTS OF PORK.

Descriptions of the leading cuts of meat known as the speculative commodities in the pork product Mess pork, short ribs, shoulders and hams, English bacon, varieties of lard.

CHAPTER XV. MAGNITUDE OF THE SWINE INDUSTRY.