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
17th 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 17th 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
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).
