Good Things in England - A Practical Cookery Book for Everyday Use, Containing Traditional and Regional Recipes Suited to Modern Tastes. Florence White
as well as out with cloves, mace, nutmeg, pepper, and salt and put them (breast downwards) into a stean (stoneware) pot and cover them well with butter, cover the pot (so that it is airtight) and bake them in a slow oven for 1 hour or more according to their age, then drain them from the gravy, putt them into pots and take the oil’d butter from the gravey and pour over the birds. If not enough, oil more butter and cover half an inch thick.
A Modern and More Economical Way
1. Prepare and bake them as above.
2. Lift them out and drain well.
3. Leave the butter to get cold, then remove it from the gravy which will be found underneath.
4. Oil the butter again and use it to cover the potted game.
5. Cut all the meat off the bones of the birds whilst warm and pack it as it is in fillets very close together in a well-buttered potting dish (a pie-dish will do) a very little oiled butter may be poured over each layer but no gravy. Press down well; when cold cover with oiled butter as above, and it will keep a month or more in a cold dry place. It can at any time be put into a hot oven for half an hour and reheated; the butter will rise to the top and set again when cold.
6. When required for use take all the butter off the top, stand the dish for a few seconds in hot water but not too long, and the potted meat will turn out whole in the shape of the dish and can be cut across in slices. It will make delicious sandwiches if cut thin.
N.B.—1. The gravy underneath the butter in which the birds are baked can be added to soup or used as gravy for game; and the butter removed from the top can be used for basting so this need not be an extravagant dish.
2. The meat instead of being left in fillets can be minced and pounded in a mortar and made with butter into a paste, but this is a type of ‘potting’ of quite a different character, for which the recipes for potting beef given on page 52 can be used.
English Hams and Bacon
October, 1838
‘There is an immense quantity of both bacon and ham consumed in London; yet none of it ever comes from the counties where the best is produced; because in those counties the whole is consumed at home, none being made for sale.
‘In Buckinghamshire where the best bacon in England is made, in Gloucestershire also — especially in the Royal Forest of Dean — the swine feed heartily on beech mast, acorns, and the various productions of the woodlands. This imparts great sweetness and solidity to their flesh, the fattening of which is completed by peas or beans, and potatoes.
‘The Buckinghamshire bacon is the very best in England, but the whole of that which is made is consumed in the county. In the farmhouse kitchen, as well as in the common room of the cottar, a couple of flitches of bacon will be seen hanging in the chimney, subject to the action of the smoke arising from the wood fire in use there. Suspended from the ceiling of the room is the bacon rack, containing several flitches more, destined in their turn to occupy the sides of the chimney.
‘The Hampshire bacon and hams come next in repute to those of Buckinghamshire.
‘In both counties and in most country places the time for slaughtering hogs is Michaelmas; they can then be smoked by the winter fire without additional expense.
‘Along the sea-coast the bacon and hams are smoked with dried seaweed which gives them a delicious flavour.
‘Suffolk produces the best hams in England, but their excellence depends upon the mode of curing.
‘Yorkshire hams are equally famous but cured differently.’
The following is
A Very Special Recipe for Pickling Hams
County unknown
INGREDIENTS: Bay salt 1 lb.; common salt 1 lb.; moist sugar 2 lb.; saltpetre 4 oz.; salt prunella 2 oz.; juniper berries 1/4 lb.; bay leaves 3; thyme, sweet basil, marjoram, sweetbrier, tarragon; a sprig of each; a few whole peppercorns and allspice; 1 quart of the strongest old ale.
TIME: to salt and press 24 hours; in pickle a month.
METHOD
1.The moment the hams are cut from the hog they are to be rubbed with common salt.
2.Then placed upon a flat board, with another over them and two half-hundred-weights placed on the upper board over each ham – under this pressure they must remain 24 hours.
3.They are then taken up and wiped ready for the pickle which must be prepared in readiness.
4.The ingredients for the pickle given above must be prepared as follows: Bruise the juniper berries in a mortar and put them in a pot with the ale; add all the other ingredients, except the herbs, and boil for 20 minutes.
5.When this pickle is cool enough to bear the hands the herbs are thrown into the pickling-pan.
6.The hams placed immediately upon them, and
7.The whole of the hot pickle poured immediately upon them, and
8.Well rubbed into them.
N.B.—The brine is soon formed, and the hams are to be turned in it and basted with it every day for a month, when they must be taken out, dried, and smoked in the following manner:
To Smoke the Hams
1. Hang them in a large chimney belonging to an open hearth. (It must have no grate.)
2. Put a layer of dry straw on the hearth.
3. Upon this a layer of mixed wood shavings.
4. Next a layer of mixed sawdust.
5. A good handful of juniper berries.
6. And over this a mantle of wet straw or litter, which makes the fire smoulder and emit much smoke without burning rapidly.
N.B.—This smoking must be repeated several times until the hams are quite dry, when they must be placed in the warm kitchen upon shelves near the fireplace and turned twice a week.
To Cure Bacon
Bacon may be cured by the same process. The only difference is that another 1 lb. each of common and bay salt should be added, and the sugar is reduced to 1 1/2 lb. All the rest of the process is the same.
A Cheap and Simple Way of Cooking a Ham
Kensington, 1920
1. Soak the ham for 24 or 48 hours according to its requirements; a Suffolk sweet-cured ham requires soaking 48 hours; a Bradenham 4 days; a mild-cured Yorkshire ham 24 hours.
2. Scrape it as usual.
3. Put it into a pot of cold water sufficient to cover it.
4. Bring it slowly to boiling point.
5. Simmer for 30 minutes.
6. Then plunge the still simmering pot quickly into a hay-box cooker; pack the hay round very tight, cover with hay and a blanket, and leave for 8 or 10 hours according to size.
7. Take the pot out, lift off the lid, and it will be found to be perfectly cooked if these directions have been carefully followed.
8. Leave in its liquor till cold as this mellows the ham.
N.B.—The above is not only a saving of gas or electricity, it is also a saving of trouble. The expenditure for fuel is the cost of cooking it for at most 2 hours, whilst when it is once in the hay-box cooker it does not require watching.
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