Seattle Daily Post Intelligencer

HOW TO HAVE THE BEST BACON.

The Scottish Agricultural Gazette says:

If you wish to have the best bacon you have but to follow the following directions: Assuming that the pig had been properly fed, for you cannot have the best bacon from a garbage fed beast, we will take as example a 200 pound pig. Sprinkle a covering of salt over each piece, and lay them in a tub where they will remain for 24 hours. Take out and pour off the brine that has been made. Next powder about half a pound of saltpetre and rub this thinly over the pieces, giving an extra dose of the saltpetre at the openings. Then rub in about one pound of brown sugar and follow with a moderate dose of salt. Lay the pieces into the tub and sprinkle a little salt over each. Take them out every alternate day and give them a rub over with the brine that will be found at the bottom of the tub, and in putting them back reverse the positions of the pieces, so as to bring each to the bottom in turn, one time with the swart down, the next with the swart up. The flitches should remain in the tub a week, the shoulders a fortnight, and the hams three weeks. When finally taken out, wash the bacon with a cloth moistened in tepid water, wipe dry, sprinkle a little oatmeal over it, and hang up to the kitchen ceiling to dry. Where there are openings in the shoulders and hams, at the shank, etc., dust in a little pepper, and if a dark room is available when dry, hang them up there, and no further precaution is needed. If, however, the bacon is cured in winter, or about the new year, it becomes sufficiently dry to escape the attack of flies in the spring.

The above directions may seem to involve considerable trouble; in reality they mean an hour each alternate day of curing, but the work is well repaid. The veriest tyro need not fail to make good bacon if he will carry out the above.