Modern cookery for private families

which has a gutter round its edges to drain away the brine; for to have sweet and fine bacon, the flitches must not be sopping in brine, which gives it the sort of taste that barrel-pork and sea-junk have, and than which is nothing more villainous. Everyone knows how different is the taste of fresh dry salt from that of salt in a dissolved state. Therefore, _change the salt often_; once in four or five days. Let it melt and sink in, but let it not lie too long. Change the flitches, put that at the bottom which was first on the top. Do this a couple of times. This mode will cost you a great deal more in salt than the _sopping mode_; but without it your bacon will not be so sweet and fine, nor keep so well. As to the time required for making the flitches sufficiently salt, it depends on circumstances; the thickness of the flitch, the state of the weather, the place wherein the salting is going on. It takes a longer time for a thick than for a thin flitch; it takes longer in dry than in damp weather, it takes longer in a dry than in a damp place. But for the flitches of a hog of five score, in weather not very dry or very damp, about six weeks may do; and as yours is to be _fat_, which receives little injury from over-salting, give time enough; for you are to have bacon till Christmas comes again. The place for salting should, like a dairy, always be cool, but always admit of a free circulation of air; confined air, though cool, will taint meat sooner than the midday sun accompanied with a breeze. With regard to smoking the bacon, two precautions are necessary: first to hang the flitches where no rain comes down upon them, and next, that the smoke must proceed from wood, not peat, turf, nor coal. As to the time that it requires to smoke a flitch, it must depend a good deal upon whether there be a constant