Modern cookery for private families

fire beneath, and whether the fire be large or small. A month will do if the fire be pretty constant, and such as a farm house fire usually is. But oversmoking, or rather, too long hanging in the air, makes the bacon _rust_. Great attention should, therefore, be paid to this matter. The flitch ought not to be dried up to the hardness of a board, and yet it ought to be perfectly dry. Before you hang it up, lay it on the floor, scatter the flesh-side pretty thickly over with bran or with some fine saw-dust, _not of deal or fir_. Rub it on the flesh, or pat it well down upon it. This keeps the smoke from getting into the little openings, and makes a sort of crust to be dried on. “To keep the bacon sweet and good, and free from _hoppers_, sift fine some clean and dry _wood-ashes_. Put some at the bottom of a box or chest long enough to hold a flitch of bacon. Lay in one flitch; and then put in more ashes, then another flitch, and cover this with six or eight inches of the ashes. The place where the box or chest is kept ought to be _dry_, and should the ashes become damp they should be put in the fire-place to dry, and when cold, put back again. With these precautions the bacon will be as good at the end of the year as on the first day.” _Obs._—Although the preceding directions for curing the bacon are a little vague as regards the proportions of salt and pork, we think those for its after-management will be acceptable to many of our readers, as in our damp climate it is often a matter of great difficulty to preserve hams and bacon through the year from rust. A GENUINE YORKSHIRE RECEIPT FOR CURING HAMS AND BACON. “Let the swine be put up to fast for twenty-four hours before they are killed (and observe that neither a time of severe frost, nor very damp weather, is favourable for curing bacon). After a pig