Important: Safety Warning
This page recommends preserving food with chemicals such as salicylic acid, borax, or formaldehyde. These substances are toxic when eaten, and their use in food is now prohibited.
This information has been left in for historical purposes but should not be acted upon.
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To Smoke Meat
This process consists in exposing meat, previously salted, to wood-smoke, in an apartment (usually called a smoke-house), into which the smoke is admitted by flues at the bottom of the side walls. The meat absorbs the pyroligneous acid of the smoke, and gets dried at the same time. Itmay be protected from soot by rubbing over with bran, or wrapping in a cloth. The smoke from oak or beech wood is preferable; and the smoking is better slow and gentle than rapid and powerful; the latter plan being too often adopted from motives of economy. Hams thus prepared, as is often the case, are ham merely on the surface, and corned pork inside. This process is sometimes imitated by immersing the meat for a few hours in diluted pyrolygneous acid, but it is apt to harden or toughen the meat.