Grandma’s “Every-Day Cook-Book” #7: HAM PICKLE

 (Smith-Post)

Pressed between the pages of my grandmother’s 1892 copy of the Every-Day Cook-Book are wonderful hand-written artifacts from my family’s past. These scraps of paper from well over a century ago provide a peek into the typical household preparation and storage of foods prior to the advent of modern refrigerators (or, as my grandmother Smith used to call them, “ice-boxes.”)

Although the canning, preserving and drying of garden-harvested produce were common ways to stock the pantries and root cellars of yore, meat preservation required some extra efforts to ensure its freshness and safety throughout the long Great Lakes winter months.

As shown in the previous post, I am beginning to recognize the handwriting on some of the recipes found tucked into this turn-of-the-century cook book. With nothing more than a hunch, I am attributing the tell-tale “e’s” to my great-grandmother, Emma (Emerine) Smith.

This recipe was placed in the cookbook for safekeeping long before her namesake, my mother, was born. And what it suggests is that Emma was a busy homemaker tasked with preparing and preserving meat for her family’s dinner table. Her recipe (as shown above) is transcribed below:

Ham Pickle

To every 100 lbs. meat, take 7 lbs. salt, 2 oz. salt peter, 1 oz. cayenne pepper, 5 lbs. brown sugar or 2 qts. molasses. In packing hams, use ½ the salt. The rest of the salt with the other ingredients should be put in water enough to cover the meat. Boil, skim, let stand until cool then pour over hams. Let remain in brine five or six weeks, rinse + smoke.

Apparently, pork was a popular staple in the Smith house since Emma also included the following recipe, written on the back of a blue envelope postmarked “Detroit, Mich. 1906." This impromptu recipe appears to be jotted down in the no-nonsense scrawl of a "Wm Robbins" of Milan, Michigan:

“Pickle for hams A strong brine to hold up a potato one cup of sugar for two hams and a small tablespoon of saltpeter”

Although Emma’s recipe is a bit more helpful in detail than his pithy version, the Every-Day Cook-Book itself provides a fuller sense of the time and efforts that were required to properly “pickle” a ham:

from The Every-Day Cook-Book, page 92