Modern cookery for private families

very brown sugar; rub the meat in every part with these, and let it remain some hours, then cover it well with eight ounces of bay-salt, dried and pounded, and mixed with four ounces of common salt: in four days add one pound of treacle, and keep the hams turned daily, and well basted with the pickle for a month. Hang them up to drain for a night, fold them in brown paper, and send them to be smoked for a month. An ounce of ground black pepper is often mixed with the saltpetre in this receipt, and three ounces of bruised juniper-berries are rubbed on to the meat before the salt is added, when hams of a very high flavour are desired. Ham, 14 lbs.; saltpetre, 1 oz.; coarse sugar, 3 oz.: 8 to 12 hours. Bay-salt, 1/2 lb.; common salt, 4 oz.: 4 days. Treacle, 1 lb.: 1 month. To heighten flavour, black pepper, 1 oz; juniper-berries, 3 oz. TO BOIL A HAM. The degree of soaking which must be given to a ham before it is boiled, must depend both on the manner in which it has been cured, and on its age. If highly salted, hard, and old, a day and night, or even longer, may be requisite to dilate the pores sufficiently, and to extract a portion of the salt. To do either effectually the water must be several times changed during the steeping. We generally find hams cured by any of the receipts which we have given in this chapter quite enough soaked in twelve hours; and they are more frequently laid into water only early in the morning of the day on which they are boiled. Those pickled by Monsieur Ude’s receipt need much less steeping than any others. After the ham has been scraped, or brushed, as clean as possible, pare away lightly any part which, from being blackened or rusty, would disfigure it; though it is better _not_ to cut the flesh at all unless it be really requisite for the good appearance of the joint. Lay it into a ham-kettle,