Colonial Smoked Hams

Where's the Bacon (and Ham?)

Colonial and Early American Curing and Preservation of Pork

Smokehouse on 1850's American Farm at the Museum 

of American Frontier Culture in Staunton, Virginia

Process:

    A.  The Cure

The process of creating smoked hams is two-fold. It involves using a salt based cure and then smoking the meat with another cure to preserve and protect it. Water is the problem in ham. It spoils everything. The solution is to use a salt cure to draw out the water and then to use prolonged smoking to continue the process of drying out the meat. Smoking helps the salt to penetrate deeper into the meat to dry it out and mask the order of the meat and help to protect it from insects.

After butchering the ham would be salted down heavily and left to sit for 2 weeks to 2 months in a smokehouse before smoking. Another method of preservation was to submerge the meat in a barrel of brine for the same time This too could be smoked.

Salting Trough or Tub at Staunton, Virginia

Salt (sodium chloride) was scarce in the colonies until after the Revolution. It had to be shipped into South Carolina and other colonies from Europe (England and France) or the Caribbean (Turks and Caicos). It was then sent into the Carolina backcountry by roads from Charleston or down the Great Wagon Road from Philadelphia.  A salt industry did not develop in America until after the Revolutionary War. There were salt licks but most salt was imported before 1783.

Brining was more in line with the preservation techniques of the British Isles. Smoking meat was more in tune with Native American or Afro-Caribbean practices where salt was not used or lightly applied. Smoking hams, just like other American practices in the South, was a merging of three distinct traditions.

After salting or brining the hams for a month and a half to two months after the slaughter of the pig, these meats would be washed well with fresh water. They would be hung up in the smokehouse to let dry for a day or two. Then they would receive another cure for the smoking process. In later tradition Southern smoked hams were treated to the "three s method: salt, saltpeter, and smoke." Later still, in the 19th century, sugar created the forth "s" in this process. Salt and saltpeter, as well as sugar, and also the use of pepper was expensive and sometimes hard to find products in the Backcountry.

Pork Pieces Hanging in smokehouse at 

Historic Brattonsvile near McConnells, South Carolina

An old cure learned from the Native Americans was to use hickory wood ashes or other ashes of hard woods-something called salt ash. Wood ash is high in potassium (a form of ionic salt such as is found in sea water). This method of curing meats was used according to Frank Clark who is director of the Historic Foodways department at Williamsburg, Virginia. These Hickory ashes were used to discourage bugs in the smoking part of the process. Some cured hams were also packed in boxes with wood ashes for up to 2 years to protect them.

Saltpeter was mixed with salt and rubbed on hams ready to be smoked beginning in the mid 17^th century. Saltpeter was used to retard salt tolerant microbes that continued to thrive after the salting process. It also helped to preserve the color of meat. There are no known national deposits of saltpeter (potassium nitrate) in eastern North America in the colonial period. Colonists who did not acquire it by trade could use the French Method to make it from nitrates. They would collect vegetable and animal refuse which contained nitrogen. This could be found in the sweepings of slaughterhouses or in areas were weeds grew. These items were collected into heaps in sheds or houses that were protected from the weather. They were mixed with limestone, old mortar, and ashes. They were also moistened from time to time with urine from animals and humans. When decomposition was complete (usually 1 year or more) these heaps were leached with water and left to dry. As the liquid evaporated it left crystallized saltpeter. Because Saltpeter was used in the creation of gunpowder it was in short supply on the frontier and more so in 1780. Many states offered a bounty on it and South Carolina followed suit in 1707. It was difficult to come by in the colonial period. Salt and ashes may have been the more expedient cure for smoking the hams and sometimes perhaps only ashes rubbed onto the meat and smoked.

Modern smokehouse practitioners use a sweet rub on their meats. They mix molasses or honey with black, red, and/or cayenne peppers. They brush it on their meats and then put together their fire. One uses only pepper and water on their hams. The problem for the backcountry is in 1780 that pepper is expensive and during wartime it cost even more or is scarce (just like salt and saltpeter). Molasses made from sugarcane was also expensive to import. Honey, however would be in good supply. Once again limited salt, plenty of ashes, and honey were more in line with ingredients and substances found or made in the Backcountry.

Sugar was beginning to be used in the mid to late 17^th century as it began to cost less and be more available. It was used in the later curing process to neutralize the effects of salt peter which tended to toughen meat.

Why did the process change? It was easier to get items like pepper and sugar and these items helped to protect the meat. Most modern smokers use pepper because it helps to protect the meat. Pepper protects it especially from the Skipper Fly who can lay eggs into the interior of an unprotected ham and spoil it as the eggs hatch. Two other pests for hams other than the Cheese Skipper fly are the Larder Beetle and the Red-Legged Ham Beetle. Ashes could deter pests but pepper worked better to do so. In later times, after the meat was cured, as they used it and cut pieces of the meat off, they would rub lard on the spot they cut and pepper over it again.

The Smoke:

The second process to create the smoked ham was smoking it. Practitioners built a cold smoking fire using hardwoods like hickory or fruit wood. Oak could be used also but the other two were more common. Pine and cedar would not be used. Most thought these green woods were too resinous to use. One researcher pointed out that resin was great for shingles because it prevented them from rotting but the smoke from cedar left meat with an off smell and a taste like turpentine. (German hams, however, were smoked with beechwood and sometimes green juniper boughs.)

Hams, bacon slabs, ribs, and other pieces being smoked at Historic Brattonsville

Most colonists built a fire in the center of the smokehouse on the floor. They started it in the morning and just let it go. It did not matter if it went out. They just built a new fire the next morning if it did go out. They did this for a week or two. The fire was not big and put out very little heat. It had to just be a fire that just produced smoke. Some built a fire pit at the back of a smokehouse which was built at the top of a small hill or rise. They positioned this pit just below the smokehouse and here is where they built their fire. They then used a wooden pipe to funnel the wood smoke up and into the structure and used this fire on the outside to smoke their hams.

The smoke saturated the meat hung in the smoke house. At the end of the process the meat was ready to consume but it continued to hang in the smokehouse until used. It was usually moved to the corner or the back of the smokehouse. This meat would receive fresh smoke if any other new meat was being smoked in the months to come. The cured and smoked ham could be eaten up to two years without refrigeration or other preserving methods but usually the family had depleted its pork by mid to late summer each year.

Thomas Jefferson's fancy smokehouse at Monticello near Charlottesville, Virginia

The smoked meat never came out of the smokehouse until it was ready to use. The smokehouse served as a storage facility until the meat was ready to be eaten.

Modern smokehouse practitioners use a plastic sheet to slightly wrap their hams and to keep the smoke around them. They also use a curtain to keep the smoke inside the smokehouse. One used a burlap curtain hung on the door to keep the smoke inside. Using a curtain or bedspread to keep the smoke inside could have also been a colonial method though there is no documentation on this method.

Another way used to smoke meat was in a barrel. (I can only assume the wooden barrel was suspended over a very low fire and it had vents in the bottom of it that allowed the smoke to flow into the barrel and over the meat placed in it.)

 Meat being stored in smokehouse in Staunton, Virginia 

at the Museum of American Frontier Culture

Other historical notes:

Location was important in frontier America for curing and smoking hams. It had to be somewhere where winter temperatures were between 32 and 42 degrees. It would not work if the hams froze. It would not work if it was too hot because the meat was susceptible to spoiling. Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, and parts of the Carolinas were perfect. Humidity was also a key. It meant the final product did not get too dry as it hung for around 2 years before being consumed.     

You did have to be careful with any bright molds that formed on the meat. Bright greens or purples can be "nasty” according to one practitioner of the art. The duller molds and creosote can just be washed or cut off the meat with "No harm done." Most hams lasted for up to 2 years without spoiling. An old saying was "Forever is two people and a Virginia ham."

The Egyptians may have been one of the first cultures to use salt as an agent in meat/body preservation. They used salt to cure the dead/mummies and used salt to preserve their foods.

The Chinese used a meat smoking process and it arrived in Europe via the Silk Road by the time of the Roman Empire. Smoked hams from the area of Germany/Goths later became a Roman treat. Westphalian hams from this area have been an on-going favorite for centuries. There is evidence of a British/European method used where hams were smoked in chimneys. People would hang the meat on sticks right on top of the chimney. The drawback was the meat was smoked by whatever was being cooked in the hearth or fireplace.

Germans (as well as others-English, Spanish, and French) brought this ancient technique to America. Many did so arriving first in Pennsylvania and then traveling in groups down the Great Wagon Road. The European tradition merged with the indigenous methods of Native Americas who had practiced the smoking of deer and other animals to barbeque and jerk them for preservation for centuries.

 Me in front of the smokehouse at Historic Brattonsville

Sources:

1. A History of Food by Toussaint Samet

2. The Country Ham Book by Jeanne Voltz and Elaine J. Harvall

3. A Colonial Plantation Cookbook (Harriott Pickney Horry)

4. Smokehouses, Michael Olmert (Colonial Williamsburg Journal: Winter 2004-2005) CW Journal (/Foundation/journal/) : Winter 2004-05 (/Foundation/journal/feature2.cfm#winter0405) : Smokehouses

5. The Search for the Cure, David Shields in Common-Place http://www.common-place-org/vol-08/no-01shields/

6. Making Virginia hams at Colonial Williamsburg and Edwards Hams, Patricia Bixler Reber (http://www.angelfire.com/md3/openhearthcooking/aaHam.html

7. Old Smokehouses (http://www.meatsandsausages.com/smokehouses-plans/smokehouse-old

8. Country Ham Fantastica: Our Hams' Place in the World, Dave Arnold  (Cooking Issues: Country Ham Fantastica: Our Hams’ Place in the World 

9. “How Not to Make Saltpetre” J.L. Bell (in Boston 1775) http://boston1775.blogspot.com/. April 3, 2013.

10.  “Virginia Ham: The Local and Global of Colonial Foodways,” Megan E. Edwards (Food and Foodways: Explorations in the History and Culture of Human Nourishment, http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/gfof20#.VRQ4SPnF-So, February 23, 2011).

The Most Ordinary & Exotic Things: 
Water and Lemonade

Drinking water from Healing Springs near Blackville, South Carolina

One of the first questions I wanted to tackle in thinking about living on the frontier was a question about one of the essential needs of life: water. Was common water drank regularly and used regularly in cooking in the backcountry?

A popular belief out there is that everyone in colonial America drank alcoholic beverages because of the poor quality of the water. This would be true if you lived in a town or city like Charleston or Savannah. Many water sources were contaminated by various human and animal wastes. Bodies of water became places of garbage disposal. Carcasses were thrown into rivers and chamber pots were dumped into wells. Other unpleasant items were thrown into the streets and washed down storm drains or carried by other means into the water supply and so created water unsafe for humans to drink. This pattern repeated the pattern in Europe where unfit water in crowded cities like London or Paris was blamed on diseases and deaths and to be avoided. General knowledge about health and sanitation was many decades away.

Chamber Pot dumped on street in 18th Century London.
http://theloveforhistory.wordpress.com/other/
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Because in most cases it was unfit to drink, common water was discriminated against in Europe and colonists brought this same mentality to America.  Water was free but why would you drink it if you could afford to drink ale or other potables that had a longer shelf life and which rarely made you sick? Only the poor drink common water—and at their own risk. Andrew Boorde, a 16^th century English dietitian said that, “water is not wholesome solely by itself for an Englishman . . . If any man do use to drink water with wine, let it be purely strained, and then [boil] it; and after it be cold, let him put it to his wine.” A Swiss visitor to London in the 1720’s wrote: “Would you believe it, though water is to be had in abundance in London and of fairly good quality, absolutely none is drunk? In this country . . . beer . . . is what everyone drinks when thirsty.”

So, in towns and cities in America, once sufficiently established to abandon common water for imported and locally distilled spirits, colonists drank alcoholic beverages. Even children drank diluted qualities of beer and cider and other alcoholic drinks. As for good water, you could buy it by the cask or by the bottle. This water was sometimes referred to as “tea-water.” This was good water found just outside the city. It was used to make tea and other beverages. It was expensive to purchase and only the rich could afford to keep it in any quantity. Beer, ale, and distilled spirits were cheap and the majority of urban citizens drank these rather than water. As far as for cooking, the water drawn from wells, stream, and rivers could be strained and boiled to make it safe for cooking purposes.

What about the frontier? The backcountry? Here was a different reality. Water was safely drunk from springs and streams and water drawn from lakes and rivers was used to cook in without boiling it. It was mixed with corn and salt to make the batter for corn cakes, ashcakes, and cornbread. It was drawn from wells to make tea and later to make coffee. Spirits were produced here too, but were not consumed for the same health and class conscious reasons of urban folk. Water dominated meals and spirits dominated community gatherings and celebrations. All of this drinking water was an annoyance to some Englishmen traveling the Southern hinterlands beyond the cities and towns in the late eighteenth century. In his travels in the Carolina backcountry in the late 1760’s the Anglican minister Reverend Charles Woodmason who encountered Scotch-Irish settlers and others was appalled at their lack of English civility and dismissed these settlers and their food and drinks on many an occasion.

 He reported that,

In this Circuit of a fortnight I've eaten Meat but thrice and drank nought but Water -- Subsisting on my Bisket and Rice Water and Musk Melons, Cucumbers, Green Apples and Peaches and such Trash.

He was less focused on the clean and healthy water he encountered and was "forced" to drink on the frontier than on the fiery distilled spirits these people produced. He tied their strong spirits and drinking habits to their morality and their lack of civilization to their upbringing in the wilds of his own Great Britain: Scotland and Ireland.

Despite Woodmason's prejudices, many colonists settled in places where they did have access to good, clean water. They, like Native Americans before them, drank it and used it for many daily purposes and treasured the springs and other places they drew it from.

Healing Springs near Blackville, South Carolina 

So the drinking and use of water was dependent on where you were in colonial America. Beyond filtering and boiling water to make it safe, could water be transformed into other more palatable beverages with the addition of various adjuncts or the use of various processes? The answer is yes!

By changing the nature of water, water was made more drinkable by all. Water boiled and fermented with cereal grains and fruits became alcoholic beverages. Coffee and tea made from ground coffee beans and tea leaves added to boiling water along with sugar as a sweetener became popular for both rich and poor and spread widely in colonial America. Then there was the use of exotic fruits to flavor a sugar-water concoction that became the ultimate American symbol of a refreshing, non-alcoholic cooling drink: lemonade.

Interesting, the French had a sugar-water drink called eau sucre which was drank as a colonial version of Red Bull to pick up both farmers and slaves as they labored all day long. In the South, molasses was mixed with water and sometimes a piece of ginger was added to create a version of this power drink. This type of sweet drink would have been familiar to many of the slaves from West Africa. There, they drank honey-water which was a slightly fermented drink that provided both refreshment and nutrition. We know through various records they drank a New World version of honey-water in South Carolina too. The Christian Recorder, an African –American newspaper published in Union-occupied Port Royal, South Carolina reported on New Year’s Day 1863: “The crowd then adjourned to the eating ground, where a barbeque consisting of twelve roasted oxen and [300] barrels of molasses and water was soon disposed of.” Besides this article, we know that Africans and African-Americans both drank honey-water and the American version of it for social and sacred purposes. In South Carolina, in some slave communities, they used the beverage as a communion wine. Adding fruit flavorings to sugar-water would provide an extra zing and help it to become the soda pop of its day. Citrus fruit which was tangy and acidic and probably helped to “cure” the water (as well as provide the unknown benefits of vitamin C) was added to water and was a great flavor option for colonists in the Southern coastal cities.

Citrus fruit had originated in Asia and spread slowly into other parts of the world. The European ancient and medieval world was introduced to and grew citrons, oranges, and lemons for consumption. It appears that medieval Egyptians were the first to make a drink from lemon juice and sugar starting around 500 A.D. In 1630 in Paris, lemon juice and a honey-water were mixed together to create a beverage named lemonade. This beverage was known in colonial America by the 18^th century.

More so for the colonial South, the Spanish had brought oranges, lemons and green lemons known as limes to the New World and planted them on Caribbean islands and near Spanish settlements like Santa Elena in South Carolina and St. Augustine in Florida. Oranges and lemons could be grown in Charleston and Savannah if attention was given to keeping them warm on cold days and nights. The Southern colonies trade with the Caribbean also meant cities like Charleston and Savannah imported citrus fruits including oranges, limes, and lemons. These fruit's juices were mixed with water and cane sugar, also produced primarily in the Caribbean, to create various water-sugar fruit flavored concoctions.

Lemons, Limes, and Orange from the Caribbean

So water flavored with exotic tropical fruits like lemons, limes, and oranges (lemonade, limeade, and orangeade) grown in limited numbers in the coastal South or imported from the Caribbean islands and mixed with sugar became a popular non-alcoholic drink in places like Charleston and Savannah. If rich or lucky, one could add to their delight in drinking these concoctions by putting ice in these drinks. Ice houses in town and on plantations were built and filled with ice blocks shipped from northern rivers and streams to chill southern beverages. Cold lemonade was a treat one found in the urban ports along the coast.

What about the backcountry? Did exotic tropical fruit go there? Transporting large quantities of these fruits into the backcountry could not take place until railroads changed the face of American transportation in the late 19^th century. But in the colonial South’s backcountry, fruit flavored waters were made from such local items as cherries, blueberries, and strawberries. Only later did lemonade appear and then become a favorite for many Southerners on long, hot summer afternoons.

Ice makes Lemonade so good, cold, and refreshing
on a hot, sultry afternoon in the Carolina Backcountry

The item that really made lemonade a star was the same item that made sweet tea a star in the 20^th century South. And once again it was made from the transformation of common water. It was the production of cheap and plentiful ice in any season of the year. This only came with the creation of ice artificially. The world’s first commercial ice plant opened in New Orleans in 1868. By the turn of the center ice plants could be found all over the South. Now products could be refrigerated and shipped most anywhere. Food barriers fell and perishable foods spread east, west, north, and south. Cold lemonade became an American drink ideally suited not just for the sub-tropical coastal cities of the South but also the hinterlands and the backcountry of America. Common water, in transmuted forms, had transformed the exotic into an ordinary and most democratic American beverage by the middle part of the 20^th century. So, have a lemonade this summer and celebrate both the ordinary and exotic in American food history!

Andy Thomas

Sources used to write this blog:

Andrew Barr. Drink: A Social History of America, Carroll & Graf Publishers, Inc, 2000.

Joseph Dabney. Smokehouse Ham, Spoon Bread & Scuppernong Wine: The Folklore and Art of Southern Appalachian Cooking, Cumberland House, 2008.

Adrian Miller. Eau Sucre Begets Red Drink. Edible Memphis. Summer 2009.

Melissa Swindell. “What was in colonial cups besides tea? Cider, Water, Milk, and Whiskey!” In “O Say Can You See?” Natural Museum of American History: Dec. 6, 2012.

Maguelonne Toussaint-Samat. A History of Food. Wiley-Blackwell; 2^nd edition, 2008.

Wikipedia. Lemonade. http://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lemonade.  Accessed May 20, 2014.

Woodman, Charles. The Carolina Backcountry on the Eve of the Revolution. Editor: Richard J. Hooker. Institute of early American History and Culture, 1969. P. 52.

Clifford Wright. History of Lemonade.

http://www.cliffordawright.com/caw/food/entries/display.php/id/95/  (Accessed May 20, 2014).