Produced by The Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.) Home Pork Making _The Art of Raising and Curing Pork on the Farm_ A complete guide for the farmer, the country butcher and the suburban dweller, in all that pertains to hog slaughtering, curing, preserving and storing pork product--from scalding vat to kitchen table and dining room. By A. W. FULTON Commercial editor American Agriculturist and Orange Judd Farmer, assisted by Pork Specialists in the United States and England. New York and Chicago Orange Judd Company 1900 Of all the delicacies in the whole _mundus edibiles_, I will maintain roast pig to be the most delicate. There is no flavor comparable, I will contend, to that of the crisp, tawny, well-watched, not over-roasted crackling, as it is well called--the very teeth are invited to their share of the pleasure at this banquet in overcoming the coy, brittle resistance--with the adhesive oleaginous--oh, call it not fat! but an indefinable sweetness growing up to it--the tender blossoming of fat--fat cropped in the bud--taken in the shoot--in the first innocence--the cream and quintessence of the child-pig's yet pure food--the lean, no lean, but a kind of animal manna--or rather fat and lean (if it must be so) so blended and running into each other that both together make but one ambrosian result or common substance.--[Charles Lamb. Copyright 1900 BY ORANGE JUDD COMPANY TABLE OF CONTENTS. INTRODUCTION. Pork making on the farm nearly a lost art--General merit of homemade pork--Acknowledgments. CHAPTER I.--PORK MAKING ON THE FARM. Best time for killing--A home market for farm pork--Opportunities for profit--Farm census of live stock for a series of years. CHAPTER II.--FINISHING OFF HOGS FOR BACON. Flesh forming rations--Corn as a fat producer--Just the quality of bacon wanted--Normandy Hogs. CHAPTER III.--SLAUGHTERING. Methods employed--Necessary apparatus--Heating water for scalding. CHAPTER IV.--SCALDING AND SCRAPING. Saving the bristles--Scalding tubs and vats--Temperature for scalding--"Singeing pigs"--Methods of Singeing. CHAPTER V.--DRESSING AND CUTTING. Best time for dressing--Opening the carcass--Various useful appliances--Hints on dressing--How to cut up a hog. CHAPTER VI.--WHAT TO DO WITH THE OFFAL. Portions classed as offal--Recipes and complete directions for utilizing the wholesome parts, aside from the principal pieces--Sausage, scrapple, jowls and head, brawn, head-cheese. CHAPTER VII.--THE FINE POINTS IN MAKING LARD. Kettle and steam rendered--Time required in making--Storing. CHAPTER VIII.--PICKLING AND BARRELING. A clean barrel one of the first considerations--The use of salt on pork strips--Pickling by covering with brine--Renewing pork brine. CHAPTER IX.--CARE OF HAMS AND SHOULDERS.