Folio 2. Page 21. Recto

Folio 2. Page 21. Recto

Recipe to Pickle Pork and Salt Ham.

To Pickle Pork
To a hog about 10 score A pound &
half a pound of salt petre & half a bag of salt
beat very fine & mixe’d well together-
the hog must be scalded, cut down the
chine cut off the legs and hands, bone it
& cut the sides into square pieces that it
may lay as close as possible in the tub
The day after is cut up is best to lay it
in, rub the pieces well on ┌all ┐[both] sides
with salt petre & bag salt, & afterwards
with common salt then a layer of Pork
a layer of salt & so on, it must be
well packe’d & presse’d down very close-

To salt a Ham
To every pound of meat 1 pint
of salt 1 ounce oz of salt petre beat very fine
3 ounces oz coarse sugar mixing them together ma-
-king them scalding hot keeping it stirring
all the time it is on the fire- then
rub it into the hams hot then
take the salt that drops off heat it a second time
and cover the ham over with it with it scalding
hot- they are to lay 3 Weeks rubbing
in the salt & turning them every day

Raised (superscript) letters are lowered, contractions are expanded, and added letters italicised retaining the apostrophe. Deleted text is shown as [ ].

On a contextual note, this page is the first page of the 12 page subfolio of the two that are enclosed or inserted into, and are part of, Folio 2. After the final page of this folder the receipts are written upside down, or rather written from the other end.

Charlotte Starkie

Gillespie Family

1782 to 1808

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Handwritten text on a page of a paper document

English

Paper document

To Pickle PorkTo a hog about 10 score A pound & half a pound of salt petre & half a bag of salt beat very fine & mix’d well together- the hog must be scaled, cut down the chine, cut off the legs and hands, bone it & cut the sides into square pieces that it may lay as close as possible in the tub. The day after is cut up is best to lay it in, rub the pieces well on all sides with salt petre & bag salt, & afterwards with common salt then a layer of pork a layer of salt & so on, it must be well pack’d & press’d down very close-
To salt a HamTo every pound of meat 1pt of salt 10oz of salt petre beat very fine 3oz coarse sugar mixing them together making it scalding hot keeping it stirring all the time it is on the fire- then rub it into the hams hot then take the salt that drops off heat it a second time and cover the ham over with it with it scalding hot- they are to lay 3 Weeks rubbing in the salt & turning them every day

That pig weighs 200 pounds or 90.7 kg.
Chine is the backbone.
The current cost to buy a hanging or carcass weight of pork is about £730, that is after the pig is killed and eviscerated , head removed as well as the blood, and it is dried by hanging for a couple of weeks. By then it has lost about 30% of the live weight. The salt might be a half of a hundredweight sack or 56 pounds but this by no means appears to be a standard and may depend on how much the wholesaler thinks he can steal off his customers.

Paper document