The Country Housewife's Family Companion - Part 2-B



Of Chitterlins, their Make and Use.

HOW to make Chitterlins.--These, if made as they should be, are pleasant 
and hearty victuals; and that they may be such, take the guts of a barrow 
hog, a year, or a year and half old, especially of one well fatted with 
barley meal, oatmeal, or pease; for these guts will eat sweeter, than if 
the beast is fed with beans or a ranker food. In the first place, after 
the guts are cleansed from their dung, they must be turned inside out, and 
well scower'd with salt; then put them into cold spring water, and for 
three days together they must be shifted into fresh water twice a day, and 
turned and scoured with salt several times, till they are got thoroughly 
clean and sweet. This done, the smaller guts are generally platted or 
woven together, and tied in a knot at their ends, in order to keep in 
their fat, while they are boiling. Then, on a clear fire, boil both small 
and great guts four hours for making them rightly tender, though some boil 
them only two or three; but this is too short a time for causing such 
tough meat to eat soft and palatable; and if you put some milk into the 
water they are boiled in, it will add to their whiteness and sweetness of 
taste: But some, after the guts are clear'd of their dung, and at their 
first scouring with salt, will with the salt rub them with sage: Others 
boil sage in their water to take off their hogoo, for the preparation of 
chitterlins will prove the cleanliness or sluttishness of a housewife, as 
much as any meat whatsoever will.

   To make a Chitterlin Pye.--This may be made a delicious family pye, if 
the chitterlins be duly prepared according to the foregoing receit; then 
chop and mince them with some offald meat of the hog; this done, put it 
into a paste laid on the bottom of a pan; and on the meat put some minced 
apples, currants, plumbs, powder'd coriander and carraway seeds, Jamaica 
spice, and nutmegs grated; then lay your cover of paste over all, and bake 
it. Others make use of no offald meat, but make the pye with only 
chitterlins and the other ingredients, and with the maw or mugget of the 
hog, which mugget being first skinned and boiled with the chitterlins, and 
chopt and made into a pye with them, will become a hearty and pleasant 
food for either a farmer's, a yeoman's, or a gentleman's family. It is 
true, that in harvest time, our servant maid is rather too busy to employ 
so much of her time, as chitterlins require for cleaning them; besides 
which, the very hot weather, that generally happens at this time of the 
year, is another discouragement; but at other times, when the weather is 
cooler, it is ill housewifery to throw away the guts of a sizeable porker 
or bacon hog.

   To boil, broil, or fry Chitterlins.--Is another preparation, and the 
most common way of dressing them of all others; after they have been 
scoured with salt, and boiled the several hours before mentioned, they are 
presently cook'd and made ready for a breakfast, dinner, or supper, by 
boiling them on a gridiron, or frying them till they are brown; but 
boiling them is most in use with some farmers wives, and when they are so 
done, they will not eat right, unless boiled exceeding tender, and eaten 
with mustard. 

Of Bacon in general.

THE necessary Uses of Bacon.--Bacon is a serviceable, palatable, 
profitable, and clean meat, for a ready use in a country house: Ready I 
say, because it requires not to be kept in a cellar, or at any distance 
from a kitchen or chamber, but may be had at all times of the year for 
being cut to broil, fry, boil, or bake; and if it is not in the house, it 
is ready at the next chandler's shop. For bacon is so universally traded 
in, that it may be had at almost any part of the kingdom; and so 
serviceable to both rich and poor, that it saves much expence in firing, 
time, and trouble, is a very palatable viand, and the more so, as it 
agrees with fowls, veal, pancakes, beans, &c. And it is so profitable, 
that like pickled pork, it saves much in a numerous family, by preventing 
the large total of a butcher's bill; for bacon in many farmers houses is 
the stay of the family. Where there is bread and bacon enough, there is no 
want; for these satiate the keenest appetite in a little time, will bear 
living on the longest of any meat, with a little change of another sort. 
In the northern parts of England, thousands of families eat little other 
meat than bacon; and indeed, in the southern parts, more than ever live on 
bacon, or pickled pork, or on both, since trade has lessened, and the 
number of families increased. One of the biggest and ablest farmers in our 
part of Hertfordshire fed his harvest-men most part of the harvest time 
with bacon. Near Rickmansworth in Hertfordshire, a farmer that kept five 
horses, and rented a hundred a year, gave his servants hardly any other 
meat all the year than hogs flesh and old mutton. A Hertfordshire yeoman, 
that occupies his own estate of about a hundred and fifty pounds a year, 
kills five large bacon hogs, and five large porkers in a year, and now and 
then an old toothless ewe fatted, which they would for the most part make 
into pasties; and by the agreeable sweetness of the hogslard, the pyes 
proved so short and pleasant, that his people generally eat them greedily; 
for this yeoman, like many others, was afraid of a butcher's large bill.

   The Hertfordshire Way of curing Bacon for a private Family.--This is 
the best way of all others; for where the bacon is rightly cured, the fat 
will look clear, and eat hard and sweet, and I may assuredly add, that it 
will keep longer sound than any other sort of bacon whatsover. [sic: 
whatsoever] For bacon, we seldom kill a hog under a year old, but many 
older, till some weigh fifty or sixty stone, for we cannot have too fat 
nor too large a flitch. And that it may be the safer and better cured, our 
season for killing is, from Allhollantide to Lady-day, when the weather is 
generally cool enough for this purpose. In Hertfordshire we generally 
singe or burn the hair off our bacon, and when it is so done, we hang up 
the hog, and let it remain hanging all night; next morning we cut out the 
whole chine, two spare-ribs, two but-pieces, two blade bones, and two 
short ribs, for we leave no more bone in the flitches than we can help. 
Then we rub the two flitches of a thirty, or forty, or fifty, or sixty 
stone hog, with a sprinkling of salt on the fleshy sides, and let them lie 
singly on boards a day, or a day and a night, for causing the bloody juice 
to drain out of them; which when discharged, we employ two ounces of salt-
petre finely powder'd to the flitches of a thirty stone hog, and so in 
proportion to a larger one: Then we presently make use of a peck of common 
salt, a small part of which we rub the skinny sides with, the rest on the 
fleshy sides, and lay the skinny side of one flitch on the fleshy side of 
the other, and so let them remain ten days before we salt them again; and 
then we lay on half a peck of more salt, and put the bottom flitch on the 
top one, to lie together ten days or more: At the end of which time, we 
hang them up in our wide country chimney corners to dry for a week or two, 
or three; if the chimney is a very wide one, and a slow fire is left, they 
may hang the longer, but if it be a narrow one, the less time; in either 
case, if the flitches are heated too much, they will rust and spoil. Hence 
it is, that when we kill a thirty or forty stone hog in March or April, we 
let the flitches hang but three or four days in the chimney corner, and 
then lay them upon a rack, that is fixed over the kitchen, to dry 
leisurely; for at this time of year the air alone is almost sufficient to 
dry them. By this method our country bacon is salted and dry'd very white 
and sweet, free of that nasty, unwholesome, unpleasant smoak twang, which 
the ignorant regard not, when the knowing refuse it.

   Bacon made in several Parts of the West Country.--In a certain part of 
this country, after the flitches have been a little salted, and laid on a 
little descent for the bloody juice to drain off, the next day they mix 
some salt-petre with as much sal prunella, and rub it on both sides of the 
flitches. Next day after they mix some bay salt among their common salt, 
and salt the flitches well, and while they lie salted one upon another for 
two or three days, they shift their posture, and so on for two or three 
weeks, at the end of which they hang them upright over an oven, and in six 
weeks time they will be very sweetly and whitely cured.--In another part, 
they kill a hog in the evening, cut him out next morning, and throw the 
flitches into a strong brine to lie a few hours; they then take them out, 
and rub on two large flitches four ounces of powder'd salt-petre, then 
immediately salt them well with all natural salt, and let them lie so 
three weeks, shifting them once or twice in that time, before they hang 
them up in their chimneys to dry. But some let their flitches lie ten 
hours in brine, then salt them, and let them lie a month salted; when they 
take and smoak them a day and a night, or more, as the weather is more or 
less open.--In another part, as in Wiltshire, they kill hogs for bacon 
almost all the year, and send great quantities of it to London. In summer 
they kill in the evening, and strew some fine powder'd pepper over the 
inside of the carcase very lightly, for preventing the flies damage; next 
morning they cut it out, and lay it in brine six hours, to discharge the 
bloody part of the flesh; then with a mixture of some powder'd salt-petre 
and common salt they salt the flitches soundly and lay them one upon 
another, and shift every second day, laying the bottom flitch uppermost, 
and salting them more at three different times in a fortnight; at the end 
of which time, they strew over every flitch some bean flower, to give the 
bacon a fine brown or golden colour, keep it the better from rusting, and 
for forwarding its drying; then they hang the flitches over one another, 
in a very great chimney or smoak-room, to dry leisurely a week or two. And 
thus their great hogs, that weigh some above sixty stone, at eight pounds 
to the stone, are ready to be cut for bacon in a month or six weeks time. 
But even these are not such quick ways to prepare bacon for a market as is 
practised in another part, where their wash-fatting of hogs, their salting 
and quick drying, give the bacon a sweetish taste, and an artificial 
hardness and colour, in order to take the eye of the buyer; but in the 
pot, in the pan, and on the gridiron, it shews its loose nature, by its 
ready and easy parting with much of its fat, to the loss of the owner.

   What I was told by a London Seller of Bacon.--This person in 
conversation, little mistrusting who he told the story to, was free in 
telling me, that some in very open weather begin to kill their hogs about 
three o'clock in the morning, and cut them out at seven or eight o'clock 
at night; then directly throw the flitches into a very strong pickle for 
five, six, or seven days; then smoak them twelve or four and twenty hours, 
and away to market with them. Otherwise, when they take them out of the 
pickle, they salt the flitches for four and twenty hours, then shift and 
salt them again for as long a time; next they hang them in their smoak-
room for a little while, and send them to market. These ways, he said, are 
sometimes practised when there is a quick sale for bacon; but what must we 
call this? It hardly deserves the name of bacon, rather the name of pork-
bacon, and is a most profitable sort for the seller; for it will weigh to 
his satisfaction, and may eat sweet and good for present spending, 
particularly in pease and beans season, but in course must grow rank if 
kept long, because, as one said, the fat of such bacon is so little cured, 
that it is rather tallow than true bacon. Therefore, when such bacon 
cannot be vended at London, much of it is sent to country markets, for 
selling it to poor people at low prices, to prevent its spoiling to intire 
loss. But this is not the case of all the London-made bacon, for I am very 
sensible, that there are vast numbers of their wash-fed flitches of bacon 
laid in salt for two or three months together in their cellars, piled up 
one upon another, and shifted at times for preparing and curing them in 
their smoak-rooms, and undoubtedly may be good bacon. As to their smoak 
room, it is a profitable contrivance, because they have plenty of smoak at 
a cheap rate, by their burning of saw-dust, old spokes of wheels, &c. 
without any excessive heat of fire: And thus they dry several large 
flitches at a time as leisurely or as quick as they please; and thereby 
the bacon may be impregnated with smoak to such a degree, as will make it 
want the less salt, give the outside of it a golden colour, and help the 
better to cure it for keeping some time; but then they cannot dry the 
bacon so white, as we do in our large country chimneys, nor cure it so 
fine as we can; nor do they preserve it in so sweet and delicate a manner, 
as is done in the country.

   The Practice of curing Bacon in some Country Towns.-- When a hog is cut 
out, they throw it into brine for three hours, and then salt it for two or 
more months, and just before they hang them up in their smoak-room they 
wash their flitches in fair water, because the salt that remains without-
side of them would else help to rust the bacon. And although the flitches 
are yellowish, when they come out of the smoak-room, yet if they are hung 
up in a large chimney corner, the fire will add a whiteness to them.

   A Farmer's Wife's true Country Way of preserving Bacon in a white 
Colour.--This is a matter of importance, because it is not only a cure to 
bacon, by salting it for a month and drying it well, but likewise to 
preserve it white, sweet, and sound, for a considerable time after: Which 
to do effectually, our country housewife, after drying the flitches 
leisurely for three weeks or a month in a chimney corner, by a wood fire, 
free of smoak, in a moderate degree of heat, takes care, as soon as the 
bread is drawn out of the oven, to put some wheat straw into it, for 
divesting it of all humidity and thoroughly drying it; this done, she lays 
some of it at the bottom of a chest kept in her chamber under the bed, and 
on that the skinny side of a flitch of bacon; then she puts another layer 
of dried straw on this, and a second flitch upon that: And if she has 
several flitches of bacon to preserve, she thus lays one flitch upon 
another with straw between them, and never shifts the straw, but cuts the 
bacon as she wants it for her private family. And I do avouch it for 
truth, that of all the bacon I ever eat in my travels, I never met with 
any that out-did this sort for palatableness, firmness, cleanness, and 
whiteness of flesh; and am not a little surprised to find, that no author 
I have hitherto read has taken the least notice of this most excellent way 
of preserving bacon. And what consequence this way of drying and 
preserving bacon is of, I shall shew by what follows, viz.

   How a Gentleman living in the north-west Part of England would not 
suffer his Bacon Hogs to singed, on Purpose to avoid the ill Qualities of 
the Smoak.--This curious gentleman, owner of a large landed estate, was a 
person who made it the greatest pleasure of his life, to improve and enjoy 
one of his farms, of about 50 £. a year, which he kept in his own hands. 
This gentleman, having a due knowledge of the ill effects of smoak, would 
not suffer those hogs he killed for bacon to be singed, but scalded them 
as we in Hertfordshire do our porkers, not only for avoiding the nasty 
unsavoury tang that smoak impregnates the rind or skin and flesh of a hog 
with, but also for avoiding the unwholesome qualities that attend all 
singed, smoaked bacon, when eaten with fowls, veal, or other viands; for 
that he thought such smoaked bacon gives these meats a disagreeable 
relish, and makes them become somewhat offensive to both palate and 
stomach. And since such smoaky bacon is as unwholesome as unsavoury, it 
ought to be the more refused; and the fine white dried bacon, free of that 
pernicious smoaky quality, preferred to it. For smoak, by naturalists, is 
defined to be a stupifying keen fume or vapour, full of dark sulphurous 
excrements, void of all real virtues, and very pernicious to health; for 
that it proceeds from those poisonous juices that the fire and air send 
forth. Fire, says one of these virtuosi, divides and separates the forms 
and properties of nature, and manifests both vices and virtues of things, 
which so long as they remained in one body intire, nothing of this 
pernicious quality has been seen or known. Smoak therefore, says he, is an 
excrement that all people endeavour to avoid, as being the most 
prejudicial to the fine volatile spirits, and therefore most offensive to 
the eyes; for they are the gates of the whole body, where the natural 
spirits have their ingress, egress, and regress, and for this cause, smoak 
first offends the eyes, and so does any other stupifying fume or vapour, 
either internally or externally. Therefore when any eat ill prepared food, 
or drink the like drink, and when the heat of the stomach and concoctive 
faculty separate such foods and drinks, they do as naturally send up into 
the head gross excrementous vapours, very offensive to nature, and 
especially to the eyes; for smoak contains in it two poisonous qualities 
that are of a bitter and astringent nature.

   How the same Gentleman scalds his Hogs.--For these reasons, this 
gentleman scalds his bacon hogs thus; when the hot water is ready, in that 
degree of heat as will scald the hair, he puts into a pail-full of it two 
or three handfuls of oatmeal-dust, which is what remains after the oatmeal 
is made. This water, so dusted, he puts over the dead hog, as it lies upon 
a bench or form, and as the dust is well mixed with it, it will lodge at 
the bottom of the hair, and cause the water to have the greater effect in 
making it come regularly and easily off, better than the common way of 
doing it only with hot water. In this work the butcher uses an iron 
instrument, somewhat like a horse's curry-comb, that has two edges, but no 
teeth. This scrapes off the loosen'd hair, and then a knife follows which 
cleans the skin and compleats the work; and when one side of the hog is 
thus done, they lay a little straw at bottom, and turn the lower side 
uppermost, to be scraped and cleaned as the other was. This same way is 
made use of in some parts of the north for both baconers and porkers, with 
good reason, for it makes the bacon look white, and take salt better than 
if singed. Thus prepared, it will not damage soup or broth, as they are 
dried free of any burnt tang, and therefore fitter to be boiled with 
fowls, veal, beans, &c. This is much the better way than to scald the hair 
off (as we do in Hertfordshire) by putting the dead hog into a tub or 
cistern of scalding water, which is a sort of parboiling, and undoubtedly 
renders any bacon or pork so served, subject to keep the less time sound; 
for the hulls or dust of the oatmeal serves, in this case, instead of 
resin.

   Fatting Hogs for Bacon or Pork in London.--A London distiller told me, 
that although he did not keep any hogs, yet he knew one that kept eight 
hundred by him at once, at some time of the year, for fattening them to 
sell for baconers or porkers: When porkers sold well, he fatted his hogs 
accordingly; if baconers sold well, he fatted them accordingly; and said, 
there was no sweeter pork or bacon than these hogs make, which are fatted 
with only hot wash and grains, being as sweet as those fatted in the 
country with barley-meal, but then (as he said) their bacon will not keep 
so long sound as the country-fed bacon will, nor will it retain its fat in 
boiling like that. And no wonder it is so, if it is true, as I have been 
informed, that some feeders of hogs with distillers hot wash and grains 
have killed their hogs and made them into bacon in a fortnight's time, by 
first laying the flitches in a very strong brine three days, seven in 
salt, and three in a smoak-room, at the end of which time they were 
carry'd to market for sale; so that in about a fortnight such bacon is 
compleatly made and sold. And although salt-petre makes part of their 
brine, and some of it is mixt with common salt afterwards, to salt down 
their flitches, by which they stiffen their bacon fat, and give it a 
reddish cast, yet such fat will boil more out than that from bacon made 
from the feed of pease or beans, &c.

   The Care and Art made use of by a Country Housewife in curing her 
Flitches of Bacon.--As soon as her hog was cut out, she strewed some salt 
over the fleshy sides of the flitches over night, to extract and drain out 
the bloody juice of them; next morning she laid one of the flitches on a 
table, and opened a place in the shoulder part with a knife, in which she 
forced in some salt, for here is the most dangerous place of breeding 
taint; when this was done, she did the like by the other flitch, and then 
laid a peck of salt over both the flitches, which weighed near thirty 
stone; this done, she laid one flitch upon the other, the skinny side on 
the fleshy side, and the tail of the upper one to the head-part of the 
under one; at the week's end she shifted the undermost by laying it 
uppermost, and where she perceived a barish place, she strewed some more 
salt over it; this she did twice in two weeks more, and when the flitches 
had thus lain three weeks in all, she hung them up to dry near her wide 
chimney, by a wood fire that burnt leisurely.

   N. B. Next to the bone in a flitch of bacon is the greatest danger of 
taint, and therefore she applied more salt-petre than ordinary, as well as 
common salt, to this part.

   Why a Sow is better to make Bacon of than pickled Pork.--This as well 
as hundreds of other useful matters, in country housewifery, were never 
exposed in print. A sow by being made bacon of, her flesh will eat shorter 
than if it was pickled for pork, because both the salting and drying 
causes it. Besides which, the belly-piece of a fatted bacon hog is almost 
all fat, and is the toughest part of the carcase; which when melted, near 
half of it will become a coarse lard, good enough for present spending, to 
fry pancakes, and make ordinary pye-crust, &c. But when the flesh of a sow 
is pickled for pork, this tough fat belly-piece is pickled with the rest 
of the carcase. And although it be an old sow that is to be made bacon of, 
she will, by being baconed, eat very tender, as having got new young flesh 
in fatting. Such a sort of case as this has caused a dispute between a man 
and his wife: Says the woman, I will have the skin of my old sow (for she 
was seven years old) taken off, and pickle her flesh for pork. No, said 
the husband, she will make better bacon. And it proved so, for I heard the 
woman say, that nothing eat tenderer or sweeter.--But observe, that 
whether a sow be killed for pickled pork or for bacon, it concerns every 
owner of such sow, that she be not killed in brimming-time; for if she is, 
her flesh, whether pickled as pork, or dry'd for bacon, will assuredly eat 
rank and very unsavoury; which evil to prevent, we either have such a sow 
spayed before fatting, or boar her, and kill her fatted about the end of 
eight weeks, which is about the expiration of half her time: Or if she is 
fatted without boaring, we kill her at ten days end, after her brimming is 
over, because there is an interval of 21 days between each brimming or 
boaring time. This is what I duly observe myself, in fatting of a sow, by 
managing her according to one of these three ways, for I have practised 
all of them, and have therefore further to say, That as spaying of a sow 
is a somewhat hazardous operation, it is not so much in use of late as 
formerly, because many have died by it, either by the unskilfulness of the 
operator, or by the mismanagement of such a sow afterwards.--These 
material articles are certainly so necessary to be known and observed, 
that if I had not wrote them, my book must have been so much the more 
imperfect.

   A black Hog of the foreign Breed was killed with so thick a Skin, that 
it was thought it would be worth more to sell to the Saddler than to eat 
as Rind to Bacon.--A Farmer, that kept the wild sort of breed of hogs, 
fatted one that weighed 35 stone, for bacon, which had so thick a skin, as 
was thought by his neighbours would have sold for more money than to eat 
it, as rind to bacon, because such a thick skin would have tann'd into a 
good substance, very fit for the saddlers use, who give the most money for 
hogskins of any tradesmen. Therefore such a very thick skin (especially if 
it be of a very old hog) is better sold to the saddler, and the flesh 
pickled for pork.

   How a Quaker living at Eaton in Bedfordshire used to prepare his Bacon 
for drying and keeping.--It was the practice of this man, for his own 
family's use, to wash his flitches of bacon very clean, just before he 
hung them up to dry; and when he was asked, Why he differ'd, in this 
action, from all his neighbours? he said, He could not find what good a 
crust of salt did his bacon, after it had lain a month under it, for that 
in this time the flesh had had all the virtue it could have of the salt; 
and said, that by so doing he could eat his bacon with less waste of salt 
than others did, and much cleaner.

   How a Country Bacon-monger left off smoaking his Bacon, to dry it 
without Smoak.--This was done in Buckinghamshire, where a publican bacon-
monger, every year, is said to kill 100 hogs for making bacon of them. It 
was this person that made an attempt, in imitation of the London bacon-
man, to dry his bacon in a smoak-room, by burning sawdust in the same. 
Now, whether he managed the drying art as they do, I cannot say; but this 
I know, that he was soon out of love with his new way of hastily drying 
bacon altogether in a smoak-room, and did afterwards without smoaking them 
at all; for as soon as the flitches had lain their due time in salt, he 
laid them upon a rack near the cieling, in the kitchen, within the reach 
of some heat from the fire: Where after they had gradually dried, he took 
them away, and laid others in their room; and thus he proceeded to cure 
all his bacon, giving it a most white colour, free of all smoak, and 
likewise free of all rust, that might be occasioned from too much heat of 
the fire. For this is a true maxim in the drying of bacon, that so far as 
the heat of the fire enters the flitch, so far the rust will breed in it. 
Not but that there are two extreams in drying bacon. Some hang up their 
flitches in the side of a chimney, to be dried and cured by the sooty 
smoak, for two or three weeks, so that when they are taken down, they 
appear black. This way, indeed, may help to keep the bacon from tainting a 
long time; but its unwholesome nature and unpleasant taste want no 
rehearsing. So likewise is the under-drying of bacon another extream, for 
then the fat will be like tallow, and taint in a little time.

   How another Country Bacon-monger cured his Bacon so as to make it look 
very white, eat sweet, and keep sound a long Time.--This bacon-monger, I 
am here writing of, is a tradesman besides, for you must know, that in 
many country towns and villages there are shopkeepers and others, who kill 
many hogs in a year, for selling bacon wholesale and retail, as grocers, 
chandlers, publicans, butchers, &c. most of whom make use of abundance of 
pickle for steeping their flitches in, to prepare them for salting and 
drying, and have likewise their smoak-houses built on purpose for the 
drying of their bacon, in the same manner as many London bacon-men have. 
But this country bacon-man makes use of no pickle nor smoak-house: His way 
is fairly to salt the flitches with a little powder'd salt-petre, mixed 
with common salt, and once a week, for three or four weeks, he rubs a 
little more salt on each flitch, and shifts them; then he hangs them in 
his chimney-corner, where no smoak comes at them, nor too much heat from 
the fire, when dried enough, he carries them up into a chamber, and lays 
the first flitch on wheat-straw, and when he has put some straw on that, 
he lays another flitch over it, then straw, then flitch, and so proceeds, 
till he has laid ten or fifteen flitches in one heap. And thus many more 
may be laid in one chamber, cover'd over with wheat-straw. A way that 
keeps bacon in the sweeter and soundest condition of all others; for here 
is no excess of heat, cold, or moisture to annoy it. Therefore it was that 
this man sold his bacon, when others could not theirs, who do not cure it 
so well as he does.--But there are some who think it a good way to 
preserve their flitches of bacon sweet and sound, by laying them in a heap 
of malt, and it may answer the end, if the malt is fully dried, and of the 
brown sort, free of any smoak-tang; otherwise it is apt to damp it, and 
give it an ill relish.--I also know a farmer's wife that never lets her 
bacon hang in the chimney above three days, and then puts it on a rack 
near the outside of the chimney to dry; for her notion is, that if it 
hangs above three days here, it wastes.

   The different Qualities of Pork and Bacon.--It was in March, 1745, that 
I had the honour to be in conversation with a worthy and curious Member of 
Parliament, whose seat lies about 100 miles eastward from London, who told 
me, he had sent to a friend of his in London a present of pickled pork, 
which for its good relish, and for retaining its fat in boiling, made him 
declare, he had a very ill opinion afterwards of the common pickled pork 
sold in London, because it had not so good a relish, nor would it retain 
its fat in boiling like this country gentleman's pork; which leads me to 
observe, that there are several sorts of pork and bacon, whose good and 
bad properties are chiefly owing to the food the swine eat: Some are fed 
(near the north seas especially) with fish; in other parts, with 
tallowchandlers graves; some with horse-flesh; some with whey and skim 
milk; others with wash and grains; some with the offald and blood of 
beasts; others with bran and pollard; some fatted on clover, turnips, 
potatoes, parsnips, and carrots; others with horsebeans; some on oatmeal, 
and some on beech-mast and acorns; some on barley, or French-wheat, or on 
pease, &c. Now to avoid prolixity, in writing of all these in particular, 
I shall only touch on a few of them. The feed of whey and skim milk, wash 
and grains, bran and pollard, potatoes, parsnips, carrots, turnips, 
clover, the offald of beasts, oatmeal, and barley-meal, &c. are all sweet 
food, but create a loose flesh in comparison of the more firm feed of 
corn; and of all corn food, there is none that comes up to the pease. And 
therefore many of the knowing ones (with a great deal of reason) will buy 
our pease-fed bacon, in refusal of all other bacon; as being sensible that 
this particular sort of corn-fed bacon has not only a very close flesh, 
but likewise a very sweet one. And of this sort is all the bacon I make; a 
quantity (little or more) of which I am ready to supply any person with, 
or with pickled pork, upon a proper order.

   How to prepare Flitches of Bacon for drying, so as so prevent their 
rusting, and for securing their Gammon Parts from the Breed of the Hopper-
fly.--This is a matter of no little consequence to families, because where 
they consume little or much of this most necessary, ready, pleasant, 
wholesome, cheap food, they would willingly have it preserved from these 
two pernicious accidents, which (for want of knowing how to prevent it) 
happens to thousands of flitches of bacon, and renders them of little 
value. As to rustiness, I take it to be the first beginning of the bacon's 
decay, and consequently is the first worst part of it, which is so 
disagreeable to all stomachs, that if much is eaten of it, it surely 
causes sickness for a little while. Rustiness is occasioned two several 
ways; one is, by letting too much heat come at the bacon, as I have before 
observed; the other, by keeping it too long before using. Now to prevent 
the first, the old country practice is, that when the flitches have lain 
long enough in salt, and are ready to be hung up in or near the chimney to 
dry, they spread over the fleshy side of each flitch a good quantity of 
long bran, which they pat down with their hand, for making the salt lie 
the closer to the meat, and to keep it from falling off when it is got 
dry. Many are of opinion, that by such branning the flitches, it helps to 
keep them from rusting: But I say, that whether bran is put to them or 
not, bacon will rust, if the fire is made so hot near it as to melt a 
little of the outside fat; but, I think, I know a better way than to make 
use of bran, and that is, when the flitches have lain long enough in salt 
to be hung up for drying, we sift over their fleshy side some fine wood 
ashes (made from beech or ash) pretty thick, which having a penetrating 
salt in them, it enters a little way into the flesh, and sticks some time 
to it, helps to keep off rust, and discharges the breed of the hopper-fly, 
that in ill-cured bacon, especially, is very apt in time to breed, 
increase much, and eat the gammon part of it, for here they first begin, 
and are succeeded by maggots. This application of ashes is of late become 
a practice in Hertfordshire.

   An Account of a Lord's Butcher who salted and managed his Flitches of 
Bacon in so wrong a Manner, that great Part of them were spoiled.--This 
case I know to be true, because it was acted not far from Gaddesden, where 
a lord had so large a family, that he kept a butcher all the year on 
purpose for killing his oxen, sheep, calves, swine, &c. It was here they 
fed their swine extremely fat for bacon. And although this butcher was an 
elderly man, yet he committed a very gross mistake in the management of 
his salted flitches of bacon; for as the thick back-part of them lay 
higher than the thinner belly-part, the salt in melting run down to the 
thin part, and left the thicker part bare of it. Thus they lay some weeks 
without disturbance, for the butcher thought he had well secured them with 
a sufficient quantity of salt; but so it was, that when he came to 
displace them in order for drying, he found all their fat back-part stunk 
to that degree, as made them be boiled only for getting out their grease, 
to grease cart-wheels with. And to this use only was it put, 
notwithstanding the lord kept a pack of hounds, that would have greedily 
eaten all this damaged bacon; but then it would have done them a great 
prejudice. For if hounds were to be fed with salted meats, it would 
certainly lessen their scent. However, as the thin part of the flitches 
had the greater share of salt, they proved to be as good bacon as need to 
be used. And there were large quantities of it.

   The Nature of Salt-petre, Bay-salt, Petre-salt, and Sal Prunella.--Salt-
petre is a bitterish salt, and of a sulpherous nature, for it is the main 
ingredient used in the making of gunpowder; yet it is of a coolish nature, 
very penetrating, and resists all putrefaction; therefore of excellent 
service in the preservation of hog-flesh, especially in hot weather, 
because the powder of salt-petre presently enters into pork or bacon, and 
greatly prevents their tainting.--Bay-salt likewise is good in a mixture 
with common salt, provided too much is not thus made use of, for if it is 
in excess, it will give the flesh a disagreeable taste. Some say, petre-
salt is only bay-salt dusted; but this I am not certain of. However, I 
heard a gentleman's cook say, that petre-salt makes pickled pork or bacon 
red and soft, when salt-petre makes them red and hard. Either or both of 
these, when mixed with coarse sugar, preserves pork or bacon in an 
admirable manner, and gives them such a pleasant relish, as makes them eat 
much like Westphalia ham. But sal prunella exceeds all, if applied in a 
right quantity, being a more purified salt, and therefore is sold at a 
greater price.

   A Butcher's Notion of Salt-petre.--This butcher kills many hogs for 
bacon in a year, and says, he never dares to use above a quarter of a 
pound of salt-petre to the greatest hog; for he says, you may lay on as 
much salt-petre as will make bacon stink, or at least taste nauseously 
rank.

   Why a Vale Housewife refuses to make use of any Salt-petre in the 
curing of her Pork or Bacon.--This housewife is wife to a man that lives 
on his own estate at Eaton in Bedfordshire, who is seldom without half a 
dozen hogs in his yard, which he feeds for his own family's use; now it is 
a constant notion of this woman, that salt-petre does more harm than good 
to pork or bacon, she therefore refuses it, as believing it to be of so 
penetrating a nature, that it eats out the gravey and goodness of the 
meat, makes it unpleasantly dry, and gives it an unsavoury twang. For, as 
she says, if bacon is rightly salted and dry'd, there is no danger of its 
tainting; and as to the redness of the colour, and hardness of the flesh, 
which she allows salt-petre may be the cause of, she thinks common salt 
may fully supply both these qualities, if enough of it is made use of, and 
the bacon passes through a leisure drying, and is rightly preserved 
afterwards.

   To make a Pickle for pickling Flitches of Bacon, in order to prepare 
them for being Smoak-dry'd.--This is the practice of many of the great 
bacon-mongers both in town and country; and is indeed a very safe way to 
secure flitches of bacon from the blow-fly, and from taint; because such a 
liquid is sure to affect all their outsides at once, and as it is composed 
of very potent strong ingredients, their insides too in a little time. On 
this account it is, that several of these bacon traders venture to kill 
their hogs for baconers even in warm weather, by depending on the security 
of this penetrating liquor. But besides all this, bacon thus prepared 
weighs much heavier than that prepared by only salting the flitches three 
or four weeks, and gradually drying them as long by a country wood fire. 
As pickling therefore is most to their interest by increasing the weight, 
and saving much salt, time, and trouble; one sort of it may be made thus.--
Mix half a peck of white common salt with half a peck of bay salt, two 
pounds of brown sugar, two ounces of sal prunella, and two pounds of salt-
petre.--These boil in such a quantity of spring water as when cold will 
pickle two flitches at a time, to lie a fortnight in the same. Then take 
them out and smoak them over a saw-dust fire, or by that made with old 
wood.

   To cure Hams by an unboiled Pickle.--Take six pounds of coarse sugar, a 
peck of bay salt, a quarter of a pound of finely powder'd salt-petre, and 
half an ounce of allum; put them into spring water, so that the quantity 
of the brine may come up to the standard of bearing an egg; when the 
liquor is at this proof, lay in your hams to lie in it three or more 
weeks; then take them out of the pickle, dry them with a cloth, and rub 
them over with common salt; then it is that they are fit to be dried.

   To cure Hams by a boiled Pickle.--You may pickle two or three hams in 
the following pickle at a time; take two pounds of coarse sugar, two 
ounces of sal prunella, half a peck of common salt, four pounds of bay 
salt, one ounce of allum, and five ounces of salt-petre; they must be all 
in a powder'd condition. then infuse them in six gallons of spring water, 
in which boil all of them briskly for only fifteen minutes; scum it well, 
and when the liquor is perfectly cold, put in your hams to lie in it three 
weeks at least; at the end of which time take them out, rub them dry with 
cloths, and work in some dry salt all over them with your hand, and then 
they are fit to dry and keep for your leisure uses.

   To make English Hams like those of Westphalia in Shape and Taste.--The 
following receit has been collected from one author to another, and as it 
is somewhat curious and serviceable, I shall also transcribe it in the 
same words.--Take the legs of a porker, and lay them in cloths, to press 
and dry out the remaining blood and moisture as much as may be, laying 
planks on them, and on them great weights, which will bring them into 
form. Some have boxes purposely shaped for them, with screws or weights to 
press down their lids; when they are thus ordered, salt them well with bay-
salt finely beaten, and lay them in troughs or wicker panniers one upon 
another, close pressed down, and covered with sweet herbs, as hyssop, 
winter-savory, thyme, pennyroyal, &c. which will infuse into them a 
pleasant flavour; let them continue thus a fortnight, then rub them well 
over with petre-salt, and let them lie three or four days till it soaks 
out, it being of a wonderful penetrating nature; then take them out, and 
hang them in a dry close smoak-loft, and make a moderate fire under them, 
if possible of juniper wood, but so that it may last long, and let them 
hang to sweat and dry well; then hang them up in a dry place that is 
somewhat airy three or four days, to purge them of the ill scent the smoak 
has put into them, and then hang them up for good in a dry place, that is 
somewhat airy, against you have occasion to use them; which when you have, 
wrap them up in sweet hay, put them into a kettle of water when it begins 
to boil, and keep them well cover'd till they are boiled enough, and they 
will cut of a curious red colour, and eat short and savoury, so that few 
can discover them from the right Westphalia hams.--There are several other 
ways of curing legs of pork to make hams of them, too tedious to insert 
here, and therefore I shall only touch on a little more of this subject.--
Salt-petre hardens and colours flesh, and on this account it is a very 
proper ingredient to rub into a leg of pork, for making it into a ham; and 
as the bloody juice should be extracted before it is salted for good, some 
have rubbed fine powder'd salt-petre, with some coarse-sugar, all over the 
leg once a day for three days, before they salt it well with common salt, 
and when it is so done, it may lie a month or two in the same, turning it 
now and then with your pocket fork; then it may be hung up in paper to dry 
for use.--Others mix sal prunella with salt-petre, and rub a ham with 
them, to keep in a strong boiled pickle twelve days; then re-boil the 
pickle, and re-salt the ham as before, and after it has lain a fortnight 
in it, it is to be bran'd and dried; and as to the boiling of such a ham, 
it is best done as aforesaid with hay. But for boiling oak saw-dust with a 
ham, to give it the deeper red colour, it ought to be inquired into, how 
wholesome or unwholesome it is.--Others rub a leg of pork with coarse 
sugar two days together, and taking a mixture of sal prunella and common 
salt rub it well in it, and let it lie in the same till taken out to dry.--
Others, as in Yorkshire, where land, workmens labour, and hogmeat, are 
extraordinary cheap, and their water carriage of goods to London as 
convenient, send great numbers of hams every year out of that large county 
to the opulent city of London, so that there are now few cheesemongers 
shops there, but what sell these hams for about five-pence a pound: But 
this art is not only practised in Yorkshire, for there are many 
gentlewomen that delight in this piece of good housewifery, as well as 
tradesmens and farmers wives who may make hams as before-mentioned, or 
thus--Take the leg or ham of a barrow hog, about a year, a year and a 
half, or two years old, when they are at their full growth, and salt it a 
little for extracting the bloody juice, which it will do in about ten or 
twelve hours time, as it lies in a glazed pot: This done, wipe it dry, and 
bruise half a pint of bay-salt, and mix it with one pound of coarse sugar, 
four ounces of powder'd salt-petre, and a quart of common salt: These 
being well incorporated, put them in a saucepan or an iron dripping-pan 
over a fire, where the composition must be well stirred till hot; and 
while it is so, you must rub it soundly over every part of your ham; then 
let it lie two or three weeks under this salt mixture, turning it several 
times, and it will be ready for being dried in a chimney or smoak-stove, 
by burning saw-dust or otherwise.--Or order your hams partly after the 
method they practise in the city of Wells, in Somersetshire--Let your ham 
be thoroughly cold, then beat it on both sides well with a rolling pin, 
for making the flesh tender, readier to take salt, and eat the shorter; 
when you have so done, powder three quarters of an ounce of salt-petre 
with a quarter of an ounce of sal prunella, which mix and rub all over the 
ham, lying thus four and twenty hours: Then beat one ounce of sal prunella 
more very fine, and mix it with a pint of bruised bay-salt, two quarts of 
common salt, and one pound of coarse sugar; which heat in an iron pan over 
a fire, till it is hot, but not so hot as to melt, and rub it over the ham 
at your turning it every day for three weeks: At the end of which time 
hang up the ham to dry, and when dried, wrap brown paper about it to keep 
off flies, and preserve it in a dry part of the kitchen.--Or take this 
shorter way--Hold your ham near a fire-side, and rub half a pound or more 
of coarse sugar over it; this done, let it lie so a day and a night; next, 
you are to rub it all over with four ounces of powder'd salt-petre, and 
four ounces of petre-salt, mixt with three pints of common salt: Thus 
salted, let the ham lie in an earthen pan or wooden bowl or tray, three 
weeks, turning it now and then, and rubbing a little common salt over it, 
at the end of which time wipe it well, and dry it in your chimney by a 
wood fire.

   The Power of Brine and the frugal Management of it, in the Cure and 
Preservation of Bacon, Hams, Tongues, &c.--In many of the London cellars, 
where they keep great numbers of flitches of bacon in heaps under salt for 
two or three months together, ready for drying and selling them at a 
beneficial time, they have a reservoir to catch and retain the brine that 
descends into it by a dissolution of the salt; which brine they boil and 
scum till it is perfectly clear, and make it serve (with more salt) for a 
pickle to preserve other bacon, pork, or beef in; and if they want to make 
it very strong, they add sugar and common salt, or salt-petre, &c. to 
their liking. Thus flitches of bacon, hams, spare-ribs, tongues, clods of 
beef, legs of pork, or other pieces of a hog or bullock, may be pickled, 
by lying in the pickle of either of the foregoing receits; hams four or 
five weeks, the clods of beef three weeks or a month, tongues twelve or 
fourteen days, and thinner meat accordingly: These brines, if made to the 
proof of swimming an egg, will last good three months, and if they are 
found to decay, or are bloody-foul, it is only boiling them up again with 
some addition of common salt, which when scummed, and discharged of all 
flesh, will be clear and new for another trial. And it is from such 
pickle, that hams, tongues, or other pieces of meat may be taken to dry in 
a chimney or stove, or a smoak closet or room, over or near the burning of 
charcoal, sawdust, or old spokes of wheels, or other dead wood that has 
lost its sap. An innkeeper of Leighton in Bedfordshire, that had somewhat 
a greater trade than his neighbours, and kept plow'd ground in his hands 
besides, always kept his beef and pork in one large powdering tub in 
brine; and for preserving his brine and meat sweet and untainted, his maid-
servant all the summer long was obliged to boil up her pickle once every 
fortnight or three weeks, in order to scum and purify it, till it was as 
clear as rock-water; when cold, she return'd it into the tub, and having 
new salted her old, or salted her new fresh meat, it was laid in this 
clarify'd pickle. And thus he went on all the year, shifting his brine 
often in summer, and seldom in winter, but never intirely discharged his 
powdering tub of brine, except once a year, and then it was for using it 
to keep his wheat-seed in at sowing-time. But his tongues he kept in a 
pickling pot by themselves, and shifted the brine now and then that they 
laid in, by boiling and scumming it, and new salting them. But Mr. 
Houghton is more particular in his fourth volume (page 257.) of Brine ; 
for there he says, that in the strongest unboiled brine he could make, he 
potted two porkers in February, and in July he thought it exceeded all the 
bacon he ever eat with beans.--That in such brine, that he kept two years 
without boiling, he sunk a brisket of beef for eight days, in February, 
and then took it out, dried it in a temperate open place for six weeks, 
and it eat very well with boiled sallad.--That about the same time he sunk 
another piece of beef for twenty days, and afterwards hung it up in an 
open place for the whole summer, and at Michaelmas it was very good.--That 
he sunk a leg of mutton in brine all night, then hung it up in a string in 
defiance of the season and flies for ten days, and after dressing it, 
found it excellent; and so fresh as to eat salt with it.--The use of 
making such a strong unboiled brine that will answer this end, I will shew 
by an example of preserving a leg of pork in it, so that it may be made to 
eat like true Westphalia ham. It is certainly true, that the leg of the 
wild foreign black breed of hogs is the best to make a ham of, because 
their flesh is naturally shorter and sweeter than the English breed. After 
the leg has been cut out ham-fashion, let it be a day or two before it is 
meddled with, then beat only the fleshy side of it with a rolling-pin, rub 
the leg all over with one ounce of powder'd salt-petre, and let it lie 
thus eight and forty hours; next mix two handfuls of common salt, with one 
ounce of sal prunella finely beaten, one handful of bay-salt, and one 
pound of coarse sugar. These, as I said before, must be warmed in a pan 
till they are near melting, and then when they are so warm, must be 
soundly rubbed with more common salt all over the ham, in an earthen 
glazed pot; when the ingredients are all dissolved into a brine, turn the 
leg or ham twice a day with a pocket fork for three weeks together, then 
take and dry it as bacon is dried.--This is a very strong brine, and may 
serve as an excellent pickle for bacon, pork, beef, &c. &c.--The use of 
coarse sugar in salting or pickling of bacon, pork, beef, mutton, &c. may 
perhaps be wonder'd at, particularly if mixed in a pye with salt and 
pepper, &c. but it has been often found to add a tender shortness to the 
meat, and give it a delicate relish besides. Thus when sugar is used in 
the cure of bacon or pickled pork, it is said to be as effectual in the 
curing of them as salt. And it is well known, that salt causes all meat it 
is applied to for keeping, to be hard and dry; whereas sugar makes the 
flesh eat tender, short, and sweet. Thus as sugar has a great spirit in 
it, it is thought that it will, with half the quantity of common salt that 
is usually made use of, preserve flesh a year together sound and good.--
But to be further particular in making a right pickle or brine for keeping 
bacon, or hams, or tongues, or other meat in--Boil in five gallons of 
water (whereof the spring sort is best) a quarter of a pound of salt-
petre, one pound of petre-salt, four pounds of bay-salt, two ounces of sal 
prunella, and eight pounds of brown sugar; boil all fifteen minutes, scum 
it well, and when cold put in your meat, to keep five or six weeks, more 
or less.

   Rabisha's Method to bake a Gammon of Bacon.--He says, first boil the 
gammon tenderly, then take off its skin, &c. season it with pepper and a 
little minced sage, stick the upper side with lemon-peel, and then put it 
into a good butter'd crust, or in an earthen pan, or pewter dish, cover'd 
over with a pasty crust; but before you put on the cover, lay on it some 
pieces of butter, and when it is out of the oven, pour melted butter over 
it.--Or boil an onion or two in claret with minced sage, and a few sweet 
herbs, thicken'd with butter.--This is good, eaten hot or cold.

   To roast a Ham.--This is to be done by first boiling it tender, and 
then stripping off its skin; when on the spit, besmear it with the yolks 
of eggs, crums of bread, and shred lemon-peel, and make this serve for 
basting it several times as it roasts.--A gammon, either boiled, baked, or 
roasted, may be made an exquisite dainty dish with pigeons, or chickens, 
&c. or eaten with brocoli, cabbage, or collyflower.

   The ill Qualities of Bean-fed Bacon, and that from Swine fatted on 
Distillers Wash, Butchers Offald, &c.--Bean-fed pork and bacon is somewhat 
like horseflesh in comparison of pease-fed pork and bacon, because the 
beans make the hog's flesh of an ill colour, and coarse withall, give it a 
thick rind or skin that will crack and part in boiling, eat rank, and is 
accounted by the knowing ones to be a groat worse in a stone than a pease-
fed hog.--So swine fatted on distillers wash, as thousands in a year are 
at London on that and butchers offald, &c. I say, that the pork and bacon 
of these are of a flabby nature, and will (notwithstanding the hardness 
that salt-petre gives it) lose much of their fat in boiling. In September 
and October 1748, great numbers of wash-fed hogs (I was informed) were 
driven from place to place in Hertfordshire, to sell ready fatted for pork 
or bacon, because, as it was said, London was glutted with their bacon. 
Therefore it concerns all gentlemen, tradesmen, and others, in cities and 
towns, particularly in the opulent city of London, who buy all the bacon 
and pork they use, to prefer sweet, wholesome, good pease-fed country pork 
and bacon, as fed in Hertfordshire and other Chiltern countries.

   To roast a Gammon of Bacon.--Fresh it by soaking it in warm water, then 
tear off the skin, and let it lie with only a quart or three pints of 
raisin wine, mountain wine, or sack, in a glazed or pewter dish, one day; 
then spit it, and roast it with paper before it, baste it most part of the 
time with the same sack, &c. and at last strew over it minced parsley 
mix'd with crums of bread.

   To boil a Gammon of Bacon.--Soak it in cold water for three days, 
scrape and rub it with a brush, boil it with sage, rosemary, thyme, 
marjoram, and fennel, with some bay leaves; this done, tear off the skin, 
and stick it with cloves; to be eaten hot or cold.

Of the Feeding of Boars, and making Brawn of them.

THE Case of a Gentleman, who had a Boar almost spoiled by the wrong 
Management of a Servant.--The boar I am writing of had been kept by a 
worthy nobleman indeed, who for his hospitality, and generous entertaining 
his neighbours, is in very great esteem in the country about him. The boar 
was almost three years old, when he was put up to fat for brawn against 
Christmas 1745, and although he was for this purpose feeding near twelve 
months, was yet in a lean condition at killing-time. The reason of which 
was, the gentleman's servant had no more wit than to put the boar up in a 
stye, that was contiguous to several others, where sows and barrow hogs 
were kept; so that there was only a bare partition of boards between one 
and the other. This made the boar fret to that degree, that his meat did 
but little more than keep him alive. However, when the time of year was 
come for killing him, the nobleman sent for our Gaddesden butcher, because 
he understood this art better than all others in the country about him. 
When he view'd the boar, he told the lord, he was not fit to kill for 
brawn, as being too lean for the purpose; but this did not satisfy him, 
for he insisted upon his being killed for brawn. On this the butcher, who 
lived seven miles from him, said, if he would but send the boar to his 
house, where he had good conveniencies, he would do his best to make brawn 
of him; accordingly a stout man was appointed to drive the boar, but when 
he was out of the stye, he ran about the nobleman's park which way he 
pleased, so that they were obliged to have him into the stye again, where 
they halter'd and bound him, and carried him in a cart to the butcher's 
house, who in two days time killed him.

   How the Boar before mentioned was dressed by the Butcher for making 
Brawn of him.--After the boar was stuck and dead, the butcher poured 
scalding water over its carcase, and then directly rubbed in a quantity of 
powder'd resin, and upon that more scalded water, to make the hair rough 
and matt, for the better being pulled off; in the same manner as he does 
the least pig. For a porker, the water must not be boiling hot, because if 
it was so, it would set the hair, rather than help to make it part easily 
from the flesh; but a boar-skin will admit of scalding water. Now to make 
the best of such a lean boar, the butcher cut off all the fat and all the 
lean from off the bones of a neck of pork, and stuft this meat in between 
the lean and shield of the brawn, for that the fat of a neck of pork is 
harder than any other part of the hog, and therefore fittest for this 
purpose. This done, he with sufficient help made rollers of the brawn, by 
twisting up the flesh as tight as they could with a cord, and when they 
had well girted it, they immediately bound the roller about with tape: 
Thus they did by every roller of brawn, and then hung the rollers by 
strings on cross sticks placed over a copper of water, and boiled them; 
and when the rollers, that before hung down lengthways, turned broadways 
in boiling, they were taken out and bound tighter, and thus boiled on for 
about nine hours in all, which is enough for the flesh of a young boar, 
because there ought to be three hours difference in the boiling of a young 
boar and an old one; for if a young boar's flesh was to be boiled twelve 
hours, as an old boar's should, the fat would be apt to boil out too much. 
Yet this happens more or less, as the feed of the hog is; for if he was 
fed with hard hog pease or beans, the flesh will not lose its fat, like 
that fed with flashy meat. However, as this boar was fed with such hard 
meat, and the fat and lean of a neck of pork was added to it, it made this 
young lean boar's flesh look marbled-fat. And thus it eat moist, sweet, 
and very tender.

   The Case of another Gentleman, who in buying and feeding a Boar for 
Brawn, lost most of it.--This gentleman lives in Hertfordshire, about 
twelve miles distant from the other, who, in the year 1746, bought a boar, 
about seven years old, that was extreamly poor, for making brawn of him; 
when it was brought home, his servant put him up to fat on good pease; but 
in about six weeks time the boar fell off his stomach, and would not eat. 
Upon this he was advised to alter his meat, and feed him with barley-meal, 
and then the beast recovered his stomach, and fed till he was killed, 
three weeks after, nine weeks in all. This gave the old boar a quick but 
flashy fat, insomuch that it boiled almost all away; for as such an aged 
boar requires at least twelve hours boiling, to get the shield tender and 
soft, near all his fat was boiled out, and lay at the top of the water, to 
the quantity of almost a pail-full, which was good for little else than to 
grease cart-wheels with. This occasioned the butcher, who killed the boar, 
and managed the brawn to the last, to new bind the collars of brawn 
several times in their boiling (for altho' he did with much help bind up 
the stubborn shield of such an old boar, yet he could not prevent the loss 
of the fat:) And to know when the collars wanted new binding, they were 
tied by a string to a stick, that lay cross a deep copper (for a shallow 
one is improper for this work, because they must not touch its bottom) and 
the collars of brawn, that before hung pendent longways, now turned 
broadways: Then it was that they were new bound with broad tape, and 
boiled again, and this was done several times, till, at last, a roll or 
collar, which at first was as big as a child's body, by such waste of fat 
became no bigger than a man's arm is thick, insomuch that there was hardly 
any fat left in it; nor would this brawn have been fit to be brought to a 
table, had not the butcher interlaced the lean of it with some fat bits of 
a porker.

   Observations on the Case of this Gentleman, who had bad Brawn instead 
of good Brawn; and how Brawn is to be managed to have it good.--This 
misfortune happened, as I said, thus, The gentleman bought a boar for 
making his Christmas brawn, that was very poor, and also very old, and by 
feeding him a very short time on barley-meal, his fat became so very loose 
and flabby, that it melted out in boiling; not but that he was obliged so 
to do, because as the boar was a very old one, and very poor withall, his 
stomach could not digest the hard, dry, grey hog-pease he at first was fed 
with, for he at last dung'd them whole, and then went off his stomach, and 
must have been worse than he was, had he not been fed with the soft meat 
of barley-meal. Now an old boar by some is preferred to a young one for 
making brawn of, and they assign you this reason for it, saying, that the 
shield (the best part of the brawn) of an old boar is thicker than that of 
a young one. Others with more reason prefer a boar of three or four years 
old, as the fittest to make good brawn of, because he will feed and fat 
the kindest on hard grey pease, which will give him a hard fat, a mellow 
lean, and a good shield; when such a boar is thus fed fat, if the butcher 
does not make a delicate brawn of him, it is his fault. And to do it, he 
first soaks the flesh of the boar ten or twelve days in cold water, every 
day shifting it, and duly observing at every shifting to scrape and thin 
the shield, for by this cleanly management the fresh water not only 
extracts and washes out some rankness of the boar's flesh, but also adds 
to it an agreeable whiteness. When this is done, the next thing is to bind 
and boil the collars of brawn; to bind them requires the help of two men 
at least, for they must be bound extreamly hard with white tape of a penny 
a yard, of which there must be employed many; as this gentleman's boar 
took up above an hundred. To boil them, there must be a copper of water 
provided, wherein must be put a peck of the finest whitest oatmeal, with 
some milk, bay-leaves, and rosemary, for increasing a whiteness in the 
brawn, and giving it a savoury pleasant tang: Here it should boil as 
gently as possible ten or twelve hours, till a straw can be run through 
the brawn; but I am informed, that some, instead of tying up the collars 
with tape only, put them besides into a trunk or mould of tin, made so, 
that as the brawn shrinks in boiling, a collar is taken out of the copper, 
and directly screwed tighter; by which means the fingers are prevented 
scalding, and much time and trouble saved, that otherwise must be expended 
in drawing the collar tighter with tape and hands.

   Rabisha's Method of collaring and sousing Brawn.--Your brawn being 
scalded and boned, of each side you may make three handsome collars; the 
neck-collar, the shield-collar, and the side or flank-collar. If your 
brawn be very fat, you may also make the gammon-collar behind, otherwise 
boil and souce it. This being water'd two days, shifted three or four 
times a day, and kept scraped, wash it out, squeeze out the blood, and dry 
it with cloths. When it is very dry, sprinkle on salt; so begin at the 
belly, and wind it up into collars; but in case you can stow more flesh in 
the flank, or in the collar, you may cut it out of other places where 
there is too much, or from the gammon. This being bound up, as you would 
bind a trunk, with all the strength that can be obtained, put it into your 
furnace or copper, and when it boils scum it; but you must be careful it 
is kept full of liquor, and continually scummed for the space of six 
hours; then try with a wheat-straw if it be very tender, and cool your 
boiler by taking away the fire, and filling it constantly with cold water, 
so shall your brawn be white; but if it stands or settles in its liquor, 
it will be black: Then take up your brawn, and set it up on end on a 
board. Your souce-drink ought to be beer brewed on purpose, but if it be 
of the house-beer, then boil a pan of water, throw therein a peck of 
wheaten bran and let it boil, strain it through a hair sieve, and throw in 
two handfuls of salt, so mix it with your beer aforesaid, and souce your 
brawn therein. You may take half a peck of white flower of oatmeal, mix it 
with some liquor, and run it through a hair sieve, and it will cause your 
souce to be white: Milk and whey are used in this case; but your milk will 
not keep so long: You may put both in the boiling thereof, it will cause 
it to boil white: Keep your souced brawn close covered, and when it begins 
to be sour, you may renew it at your pleasure, by adding fresh liquor.

   What Mr. Bradley says of feeding, making, and soucing of Brawn, in his 
Country Housewife, page 186.--It is to be observed, that what is used for 
brawn, is the flitches only, without the legs, and they must have the 
bones taken out, and then sprinkled with salt, and laid in a tray or some 
other thing to drain off the blood; when this is done, salt it a little, 
and roll it up as hard as possible, so that the length of the collar of 
brawn be as much as one side of the boar will bear, and to be (when it is 
rolled up) about nine or ten inches diameter. When you have rolled up your 
collar as close as you can, tie it with linen tape as tight as possible, 
and then prepare a cauldron with a large quantity of water to boil it. In 
this boil your brawn till it is tender enough for a straw to pass into it, 
and then let it cool, and when it is quite cold, put it in the following 
pickle: Put to every gallon of water a handful or two of salt, and as much 
wheat bran, boil them well together, then strain the liquor as clear as 
you can from the bran, and let it stand till it is quite cold, at which 
time put your brawn into it; but this pickle must be renewed every three 
weeks. Some put half small-beer and half water, but then the small-beer 
should be brewed with pale malt; but I think (says he) the first pickle is 
the best. Note, the same boar's head, being well cleaned, may be boiled 
and pickled like the brawn, and is much esteemed.--In another place, page 
110, he says, A boar ought to be put up at Midsummer to be fed for brawn 
against Christmas, when it sells best, even for one shilling per pound; 
and it should be an old boar, because the older he is, the more horny will 
the brawn be. We must provide for this use a frank, as the farmers call 
it, which must be built very strong to keep the boar in, and somewhat 
longer than the boar, but in such a manner, that the boar must not have 
room to turn round. The back of this frank must have a sliding board to 
open and shut at pleasure, for the conveniency of taking away the dung, 
which should be done every day; when all this is very secure, and made as 
directed, put up your boar, and take care that he is so placed, as never 
to see or even hear any hogs; for if he does, he will pine away, and lose 
more good flesh in one day, than he gets in a fortnight, he must then be 
fed with as many pease as he will eat, and as much skim milk as is 
necessary for him. This method must be used with him, till he declines his 
meat or will eat very little of it, and then the pease must be left off, 
and he must be fed with paste made of barley-meal, made into balls as big 
as large hens eggs, and still the skim milk continued, till you find him 
decline that likewise, at which time he will be fit to kill for brawn. 
These directions to make brawn, by Mr. Bradley and Rabisha, are all pretty 
well to the purpose; but to make brawn by the following printed receit, in 
a Housewife's Book, is very insipid indeed; it begins thus--To make brawn--
When it is cut up, says the author, and boned, let it lie two days and 
nights in water, shifting it each day into fresh water; when you come to 
roll it up, dip it in warm water, and salt it well; then roll it up, and 
boil the least roll six hours, and the biggest nine.--Another printed one, 
more insipid than the last, says thus, To keep brawn, Take some bran, put 
it in a kettle of water over the fire, and two or three handfuls of salt; 
boil this up, strain it thro' a sieve, and when it is cold, you must put 
your brawn in it.

   To bake Brawn by an old Receit--Which says, take two buttocks, and hang 
them up two or three days, then take them down and dip them in hot water, 
pluck off the skin, and dry them very well with a clean cloth. When you 
have so done, take lard (that is to say, the flair of a hog) cut it in 
pieces as big as your little finger, and season it very well with pepper, 
cloves, mace, nutmeg, and salt; put each of them into an earthen pot; then 
add a pint of claret wine, and a pound of mutton suet, and so close it 
with paste. Let the oven be well heated, and so bake them. You must give 
time for their baking, according to the bigness of the haunches and the 
thickness of the pots; they commonly allot seven hours for the baking of 
them. Let them stand three days, then take off the cover, and pour away 
all their liquor; then have clarify'd butter, and fill up both the pots to 
keep it for use. It will thus keep very well two or three months.--Or you 
may pickle a boar's head, by either scalding off the hair of it, or 
burning it off with wheat-straw. If by the latter way, rub off the stubbed 
ends of the bristles with a brick-bat and knife; then open the head by its 
under side, and take out all the offald bones, brains, and tongue; but not 
cut the skull-skin in two. Next lay it in salt two or three days, at the 
end of which make several holes in the flesh, and stuff them with salt; 
then tie up the head in a linen cloth, and put it into a kettle of water 
with sweet-herbs, bay-leaves, onion, rosemary, and spices, and (if you 
will) a bottle of claret; boil it eight or ten hours, till it is very 
tender.--This is to be eaten cold like brawn, by laying the whole head on 
a table, and cutting it out at pleasure. And by the same way any hog's 
head may be prepared and eaten.--Or you may prepare and keep a hog's or 
boar's head in this manner: Scald or burn off the hair or bristles of it, 
as before directed, very clean, then take out the brains, and boil the 
head so tender, that all the bones may easily be taken out, then take the 
flesh from the skin, and mince it while it is hot; season it with spice, 
and squeeze it very tight down in a glazed earthen pot for keeping; or you 
may keep it in a pickle made of the water it was boiled in, with salt, and 
a very little pepper. This is to be cut out in slices at pleasure, and 
eaten with vinegar or mustard is excellent.

   To roast the Flesh of a Boar.--Sir Kenelm Digby says, that at Frankfort 
in Germany they roast a wild boar; but first, they lay the flesh to soak 
six, eight, or ten days in good vinegar, wherein are salt and juniper-
berries bruised (if you will, says he, you may add bruised garlick or what 
other haut-goust you please) the vinegar coming up half way to the flesh, 
and turn it twice a day; then if you will you may lard it; when roasted it 
will be very mellow and tender. They do the like with a leg or other parts 
of fresh pork.

   Rabisha's Way to bake Brawn to be eaten cold.--Take (says he) your raw 
lean brawn, that is not useful to collar, and as much fat bacon, mince 
them small together, and beat them in a mortar; beat a good handful of 
sage with them; season them with some pepper, salt, and beaten ginger; 
pour in a little vinegar, and break in a couple of eggs; you may make a 
cold butter paste in a sheet form, and lay this your prepared meat on it; 
put in butter, and a few bay-leaves on the top, and so close up your pasty 
for baking.

   Sir Kenelm Digby's Way to bake Collars of Brawn.--It must, says he, be 
a very hot oven, and therefore be eight hours heating with wood; if the 
brawn is young, eight hours in the oven will do; if old, ten or eleven. 
Put but two collars into an earthen pot, with twelve pepper-corns, four 
cloves, a great onion quarter'd, and two bay-leaves; fill the pot not 
quite full of water when you set in, but fill it full when in the oven. 
The cloths on the collars must not be pulled off, till they have been 
three or four days out of the oven. To keep the collars afterwards in a 
soucing drink--Boil salt in table-beer, when cold put to it two or three 
quarts of skin milk to colour it, and change the liquor once in three 
weeks. Such pickled brawn cut in thin slices, and eaten with a mixture of 
pepper, salt, vinegar, oil, and mustard, is by some esteemed good eating.

The Management of Sows and their Pigs.

WHY the Inspection and Care of a Sow and Pigs belongs to the Country 
Housewife.--As there is one or more sows generally kept in a farm yard, I 
think it may be said the inspection and care of her belongs to our country 
housewife when she has pig'd; because the pigs, if they are not her 
perquisites, yet as she makes wash from her kitchen, skim milk from her 
dairy, and grains from her brewings, she has here an opportunity for, 
putting them to a profitable use, by feeding her sow with them, and 
fatting her pigs with the greater expedition; for on this account, no meat 
comes up to wet meat, as it produces the most milk. Therefore all wash 
made of pot liquor, skim milk, or whey, or from brewing, when mixt with 
barley-meal, or bran, or grains, is a proper food for a sow that suckles 
pigs.

   The Management of a Farmer who lived at Eaton in Bedfordshire, whereby 
he generally had sucking Pigs all the Year.--This farmer kept twenty cows 
and a bull, and also three breeding sows, which brought him so many pigs, 
that he seldom was without some all the year, for as he had much milk and 
grain besides, he was furnished with the very best of food, for 
maintaining his sows in the greatest heart, and in the most milk. 
Accordingly he gave them full quantities of skim milk and no whey, because 
he thought whey was not good enough for milch sows, and would let them go 
abroad, during the summer season, to graze in his meadows next his house; 
and when they came home, he would give them two or three dishes of horse-
beans every day (for in this Vale of Aylesbury there are but very few 
pease sown) to keep them in heart for sustaining the suckling perhaps of 
ten, twelve, or more pigs each sow. Nor can any make whiter, sweeter, or 
fatter pigs than dairymen-farmers; because they certainly have the 
greatest conveniences for doing it, as I shall shew in my next account of 
it.

   How a Woman made near four Pounds a Year, by the Pigs of only one Sow.--
A Farmer's wife, that kept five cows, had the sole management of the sow 
and pigs, and took such care, that when she went out, and but daubed her 
legs, she obliged her maid to wash and clean them, lest her tail might 
dirty the milk and give the pigs a distaste of it; she also saw that the 
maid duly litter'd the sow and pigs with clean wheat-straw twice a day; 
and for increasing and preserving her milk, she always kept a sack of 
pollard by her, in readiness for mixing a handful or two in some skim milk 
every time she fed the sow, for she preferred the pollard to barley-meal 
and all other soft meats: (As to barley-meal, it is a notion many are 
possessed of, that it is too hot a food for a milch sow, and thereby tends 
to the drying up of her milk, yet allow, that kernel is necessary to be 
given to a sow besides milk and pollard) For as a sow with many pigs will 
grow lean and faint, if not sustained with good meat, she, as most people 
living in vales do, thinks that horse-beans are the most strengthening 
food of all grain; and therefore two or three dishes of them are given 
every day to a suckling sow, which hold about a pint each. Thus this 
farmer's wife went on feeding her sow in the best manner, causing the pigs 
to have white flesh, white skin, and white hair; so that at three weeks 
old, or thereabouts, she commonly sold them for three shillings, or three 
shillings and six-pence, each pig, to the London higler, at Dunstable 
market, or at Hempstead market; but if they did not answer their 
character, the pigs were either returned to her, or else she must take a 
very low price; for these higlers are such connoisseurs, that when they 
(according to their custom) hold up a pig by its hind leg, and perceive 
any thing of a reddish colour between them, they are displeased, and the 
owner must come off with the less money: So when a sucking pig is kept a 
month or more before it is sold, it then by age acquires a reddish skin, 
that lessens its value, for the higler well knows, that aged pigs will eat 
rank and displease his customers; but when a sucking pig is three weeks 
and a half old, it is then of a right age: And if a sow-pig is thus aged, 
and white fatted in the sweetest manner, it is (if rightly dressed) a dish 
for a king. Now there is no loss in keeping a suckling sow up in the 
greatest heart, for if she don't pay keeping fat, she won't pay keeping 
lean; and if she is thoroughly well kept, she will certainly take boar, on 
the turning of her milk, (which will be presently after the pigs are sold 
off) and breed again. By this method, this woman had generally five 
litters of pigs in two years from one sow, that she sold fatted for near 
seven pounds; for if a sow is kept on a full allowance of meat, there need 
little time be lost in her breeding, because the general part of these 
creatures are so prone to take boar on full keeping, that some sows will 
take him before the pigs are sold off. But when it so happens, it is an 
observation made by hog-dealers, that the sucking pigs of such a sow are 
the worse for it, by reason it damages her milk.

   The Method that a prudent Person took to manage a Sow before and after 
Pigging, and to cause his Pigs to have white sweet Flesh.--This person, 
more careful than hundreds of some others, always observed to let his 
suckling sow feed every time from her pigs, lest the pigs were made the 
worse, by letting the sow feed in the same stye where they lay. To this 
end, whenever he fed his suckling sow, he always let her out of the stye 
from her pigs into another adjoining stye, for if she was fed out of a 
trough that stood in the same stye, the pigs would be apt to lick the wash 
or other soft meat that is slobber'd about it, lose part of their 
appetite, and acquire a coarse reddish flesh. This method is duly 
practised by a near neighbour of mine, who I am persuaded makes as much 
money of his pigs as any man in our country, and is what every good 
husband and housewife ought to practise, where conveniency allows it; for 
which purpose, I have two styes ready to feed and keep my sows from their 
pigs at pleasure, and find no little benefit by it. Hence I am to observe, 
that it is not only to write of fatting a hog, and making his flesh into 
pickled pork or bacon, but you may see here, that there are several 
important matters besides, that are absolutely necessary to be wrote of in 
a book intituled The Country Housewife, relating to these serviceable 
animals, although never taken notice of by any author before, which 
occasions me therefore to be the more particular on this subject. But I 
must further observe to my reader, that it is mine as well as the person's 
practice I write of, never to let a stye be litter'd with much straw, when 
a sow is going to pig because if it is, the pigs are apt to be smother'd; 
and when she has pig'd (if she pigs in the day-time) carefully to attend 
the taking away her glean, though some are careless of it. And when she 
has pig'd her litter, and is gone out of the stye the first time, we 
scatter a handful of wheat-straw over the pigs, and when she returns to 
them, we take the straw off, that she may the better see and suckle them. 
Then we take the opportunity of scattering a little more straw on the sow; 
and so on, increasing the straw by degrees, and giving the pigs and sow a 
small matter of it at a time twice a day: Thus we think such management 
tends much to nourish the pigs, keep them clean and white, and force on 
them a quick growth.

   The Case of a Gentleman, who lost several of his sucking Pigs, by Means 
of his Sow eating sourish Apples.--This worthy gentleman, whose delightful 
seat I was at in 1746, lying in the county of Kent, for delivering to him 
some of my fine profitable Ladyfinger natural grass-seed, Tyne grass-seed, 
and Honeysuckle grass-seed, for sowing them, to convert his plow'd ground 
at once into a natural sward, for making a little park or paddock of it, 
to keep a few deer in, &c. was pleased to tell me he had a sow that, while 
she suckled her pigs, eat some stampings of apples that were a little 
sourish, which had such an influence on her milk, as to alter it so much 
for the worse, that it killed several of her pigs.--Which leads me to 
observe to my reader, by way of advertisement, that I sell these most 
excellent grass seeds, that may give an opportunity to convert plow'd 
ground into grass ground at once, without loss of time; by sowing these 
seeds amongst barley or oats, under such a peculiar management, by my 
information, as will assuredly keep the seeds and the infant crop of grass 
from the damage of insects and weather, and produce a plentiful crop of 
such grass, presently after the grain is carried off, and continue such 
for ever, if husbanded accordingly. Thus a person may come by the very 
best of grass ground, free of those nasty prejudicial seeds of weeds, that 
accompany hay-seeds taken promiscuously out of hay-lofts; and thereby the 
cows which feed on this grass will yield milk, butter, and cheese, that 
excells, I believe I may say, most or all other sorts, fats a beast 
presently, and gives them the sweetest of flesh. And thus this gentleman 
inclosed about forty acres of land with pailing (park-like) chiefly 
because it prevents the approach of huntsmen too near his seat by day, and 
poachers by night; a new sort of management, and which, very probably, may 
give a gentleman more pleasure, than if he occupied a thousand acres of 
field land.

   Sow bursted.--A farmer living near Ivinghoe, in the Vale of Aylesbury, 
having a sow kept up that fed on beans for fatting, gave her such a large 
quantity of whey at once, as swelled the beans in her maw to that degree 
as bursted her; for if a fatting hog is neglected giving water to, and 
comes to drink greedily on sweet whey, it alone will endanger its life, 
but much more when it is drank in great drought on a belly-full of dry 
horse-beans. Therefore where great dairies are carried on, persons ought 
to be more than ordinary careful on this account, lest they meet with the 
same loss this farmer did, whom I was well acquainted with; but I suppose 
it to be the fault of his servant, for he himself was a man of good 
judgment in the farming business.

   Sow killed by Accident.--In the harvest-time of 1747, a woman living at 
Edlesborough in Bucks kept two sows, one was to pig the same day she died, 
which was occasioned by the sow's getting her head through a hedge or 
pale, where, by straining to draw her body after her, it so squeezed her 
belly, as to kill her and her pigs: The other was killed in the following 
manner.

   A Sow killed by a wrong Medicine.--The same woman having lost one sow, 
the other pig'd well; but they had given her something that had alter'd 
her milk so, that the pigs all scour'd: This made her get advice, how to 
cure her pigs; and to do it, she boiled twelve dozen of corks in milk, and 
gave it to the sow, which bound both the sow and pigs to that degree, as 
killed them all. Thus the poor woman lost her two sows, and their litters 
of pigs, almost at a time.

   An Account of a Hog-doctor's Procedure to cure Swine that ailed 
nothing.--A thresher being at work in a barn, as he came out of it, he 
happened to put his foot on hog's-dung; the stink of which so offended our 
nice workman, that in a passion he struck a hog on the head with his 
flail, and made it reel. Now as a hog is one of the most sulky creatures 
upon earth, if a little out of order, it went to a straw-rick just by, and 
there lay, till next day; when the farmer finding it, he sent for a hog-
doctor from Redbourne in Hertfordshire, who, on viewing the hog, said it 
had the murrain, and would infect the six others it went with (for the man 
that struck it, would not own it) upon this he was employ'd, and had half 
a crown a drink for all of them.

   A Sow poison'd by drinking Broth.--A woman having a sow, she committed 
a mistake in boiling a poisonous herb for a healthy one, for giving the 
broth to her sow, it poisoned and killed her: The case was this, she 
wanted some herbs to boil with her meat, and as it is usual with country-
women to gather them in the fields in the spring time of the year, this 
woman gather'd what they call Jack in the Hedge, which she took for the 
white-ash herb, a herb which grows amongst grass; but it proved to be the 
first, that stinks like onions, and yet by some is accounted a wholesome 
herb. But whether she made the broth too strong of it, or it happened by 
some other unknown means, the loss of the sow was imputed to this herb.

   A Hog soon choaks.--Therefore what is given it by a horn must be done 
with a jirk, for if its head is held up too long in giving it a drink, it 
will be apt to choak.

   A Sow killed by eating Brandy Cherries.--A sow has died by eating too 
many cherries that were steep'd in brandy.

   Several Hogs cured, that were jogg'd under their Throats by eating 
Acorns.--A farmer, in our parish of Little Gaddesden, having several of 
his hogs, in a plentiful year of acorns, jogg'd under their throat by 
eating them, made no more to do, than to heat an iron red-hot, about the 
thickness of one's little finger, and run it through the corrupted knob or 
bunch, which brought on a suppuration, that run out a putrified matter, 
and cured the hogs. This way he took without bleeding them by cutting off 
a piece of each hog's tail, for then the hog is apt to bleed to death, 
especially in hot weather.--This year (1747) the acorns dropt the greenest 
that was known in the memory of man.

   Hogs died with rotten Livers.--A petty farmer had eight small hogs or 
rather pigs that were kept so poor and stunted, that if they fell in a 
cart-rut they could hardly get up, and thus were forced to eat the little 
grass they could find on a common, and in eating it were forced to eat 
much dirt, which rotted their livers, and killed them.

   Some Hogs killed by eating Acorns, and others cured.-- In the great 
acorn year of 1747, several hogs died after they had done masting, because 
they had acorns given then uncured.--A woman near me had one that seemed 
mad by its running about and screaming, insomuch that it was thought 
bewitched; at last, they gave it flower of brimstone in milk out of a 
horn, but not curing it, the next day they gave it some soot mixt in piss 
out of a horn, which effectually unbound it, and made it dung a prodigious 
quantity, so that it recovered and became a valuable hog.

   How to prevent Hogs being bound too much by eating Acorns. --Our way is 
to give our hogs a feed of boiled turnips mixt with bran, every morning 
fasting, before they go into the fields and woods to feed on acorns.

   To keep Hogs in Health that feed on Beans or Pease for fatting.--These 
are apt to bind hogs much; if they are bound too much, it takes away their 
appetite, therefore I commonly put some pollard or bran into the water I 
give them to drink, for taking off its rawness.

   Sucking Pigs killed by giving the Sow Hops amongst Grains.--This was 
true matter of fact, as it happened to a neighbour of mine, who ignorant 
of the ill effects of hops, gave the grains and hops together to his 
suckling sow, as they came out of a copper, from being boiled to make a 
small beer which we call Kettle-gallop; that is to say, we put the ground 
malt and hops into water and boil them together, then strain out the 
liquor, and work it with yeast for small beer; the grains of which, with 
the hops, were given to the sow, and caused the death of five pigs out of 
ten, and two of the rest pined to that degree that they were near dying. 
Now I cannot account for this damage otherwise, than that I think the hops 
being of a toughish nature, the sow could not digest them without much 
difficulty, or that their acid quality turned and curdled her milk so as 
to spoil the pigs. But to avoid this evil, I have in my treatise on 
brewing malt liquors, (intituled The London and Country Brewer, sold by 
Mr. Astley, bookseller, at the Rose in Pater-noster-row, London) shewed a 
way how to make kettle-gallop small beer, and yet to feed a sow safely on 
the grains, free of the damage of all hops.

   A Sow, just ready to pig, was poisoned by drinking yeasty Wash.--This 
was my own case. On the 26th of August 1746, I had a sow just ready to 
pig, when my silly maid-servant gave her a pail-full of wash, made up with 
the yeasty grounds of barrels, in the evening; and next morning she was 
found dead, prodigiously swelled, with much froth, that she had discharged 
at her mouth.--Now why the yeasty grounds of barrels poisoned the sow, in 
my humble opinion was, because yeast is of an acid nature; and as the 
grounds lay some time in the barrel after the beer was drawn out of it, it 
acquired such an increase of its acidity, as to gripe, poison, and swell 
the sow; for whether yeast is stale or new, it has a poisonous swelling 
quality in it, witness the experiment I published (in my said brewing 
treatise) of a dog purposely kept hungry for eating a yeasted toast, which 
in a very little time swelled and killed him. And why it has not the same 
effect on the human body by bread is, because there is but little used in 
making it, and that being mixed with much water and flower, the fire of 
the oven renders it entirely harmless: Therefore let this be a warning to 
all that read it, never to suffer any yeasty grounds of barrels to be 
mixed with any meat that is given to hogs, lest it kill them as it did my 
sow.

   Hogs damaged by eating Hens Dung.--This happened in my neighbourhood 
thus: A farmer bought two pigs for fourteen shillings of a hog-dealer, to 
keep and fatten; but was forced to sell them again for the same money, 
after keeping them long enough to be worth near as much more, and this 
because they took to eating the dung of a parcel of hens, as it fell from 
under them, while they roosted upon an elm-tree that stood near the farm-
yard.

   How a Sow brought a Litter of four and twenty Pigs, and how she was 
managed to bring them up, till they were sold for five Shillings a Piece.--
My next neighbour, who keeps a breed of hogs between the Berkshire and 
Leicestershire sort, had a sow of an ordinary size, that on the third day 
of August, 1747, brought him four and twenty pigs all alive at one litter, 
but all of them died except three, in a very little time; yet I know a 
brewer that lives at Albury near Gaddesden, who had the like number of 
pigs at a litter from one sow, and preserved them all alive, till he 
fatted and sold them for five shillings a piece; but to do this, he was 
obliged to keep the pigs in two styes, and the sows as well as possible. 
N. B. I knew a sow of the black foreign breed kill seven pigs ought of 
nine, because the farmer was so silly to confine her contrary to her 
nature in a stye.

   How cheaply a Woman kept a breeding Sow.--A woman that has an orchard 
containing about one acre of ground in my neighbourhood says, she gave no 
more than a single half peck of pollard in a day, at twice, mixt in wash, 
to her large sow, which with what grass she eat besides in her orchard, 
during the summer season, maintained her well till she pig'd.--Others give 
only a little wash at night, after the sow's grazing all day in clover.

   A Sow that eat Chickens.--There are sows that will eat chickens, and 
none are more prone to this mischief, than those of the wild foreign 
breed, or those between that breed and the English breed. A neighbouring 
farmer had one that would run after them, and thus devoured his chickens 
and young ducks: The same has been my own case; the best cure for which I 
think is, to fat and kill such a sow, and buy in a more gentle sort, and 
that I think is either the Berkshire or Leicestershire breed, for most of 
these are truly gentle.

   To dry away a Sow's Milk.--In summer time, when sows that suckle pigs 
are fed in clover, or other green vegetables, or when they are kept 
altogether on wet meat, this is very necessary to be done, to prevent that 
destructive disease, the garget in her bag or udder, which if neglected 
may prove fatal to her; tho' if a sow, when her pigs are sold off, is fed 
with horse-beans, or other dry meat, we then seldom do any thing to her; 
but when it is necessary, you need only to rub in some brandy over her 
bag, and it will dry away her milk at once using. But as farmers have 
seldom brandy by them, the tarring of a sow's bag will do as well.

   To wean Pigs.--At a month old, pigs may be weaned, but if older, it 
will be rather better; and to wean them to make the best hogs, it should 
be done in the month of May, for then the summer hot weather is before 
them, when good wash and grains is then almost as good as whey in winter; 
and to wean them in the cheapest manner we commonly let them go abroad 
with the sow in clover or other grass, and at their return home, in the 
evening, we feed the pigs apart from the sow, by giving them skim milk, 
whey, or good wash, with some barley-meal, pollard, or bran amongst it, 
and some dry beans or pease upon the ground or barley, oats, or thetches. 
Others, who have no corn, give them only pollard or barley-meal, mixt with 
wash or water; but a little kernel best keeps them from being stunted; for 
if a pig is once stunted in its growth, it requires some time and 
extraordinary cost to recover it. Thus if pigs are well fed with wash and 
grains, &c. and corn, besides their sucking the sow, the sow's milk will 
soon decline, and in time she will beat them off, and wean them from her. 
This way of weaning pigs by degrees, by letting them go with the sow in 
the day-time, and feeding them besides by themselves, is, in my humble 
opinion, the best way of all others to make good hogs.

   When a Sow should be killed for Pork or Bacon, in Pig or not in Pig.--
It is a common opinion that a sow may be safely killed for pickled pork or 
for bacon, when she has gone eight weeks with pig, or half her time, for a 
sow goes sixteen in all, and pigs in the seventeenth. Others are of 
opinion, that she may be safely and profitably killed at nine weeks end, 
because the pigs do not begin to hair till that age; but when they are so 
old as to hair, they feed on the sow's flair, which lessens her flesh, and 
alters it for the worse.--I killed a yelt or young sow on the 17th day of 
November, 1747, that weighed near thirty stone, with nine pigs in her 
belly, when she was gone nine weeks and three days, and she proved good 
pickled pork, for the pigs had hardly begun to hair. I might have made 
bacon of her; but it sometimes happens, that when a sow has taken boar, 
and we put her up to fatten, that she stands not to her boaring; in this 
case, we either drive her to boar again, or else venture to fatten her 
without her taking boar at all. Now, when it so happens, we observe as 
well as we can to kill her in the mid-time between her boaring, which is 
about ten or eleven days after she has shewn signs of it; for we reckon a 
sow goes to boar at every three weeks end till she stands to it, that is 
to say, till she proves with pig. Now to know which is the best use to put 
such a fatted sow to, I shall here give my opinion, and that is, for 
making bacon of her; because common salt mixt with salt-petre, sugar, &c. 
with good drying, makes the flesh of a sow eat shorter and better, than 
when it is pickled. For in the making of bacon, the belly, thick-skin'd, 
fat, tough part, is quite sever'd from the flitch, and mostly put to the 
use of making an offald lard for kitchen frying uses, &c. whereas, if the 
sow is made pickled pork of, this coarse, fat belly-piece is pickled with 
the rest of the meat. And although she may be an old one when killed; yet 
being fatted with a sweet pea, or barley-meal, or pollard, her flesh will 
eat sweet, and if rightly bacon'd will eat short and pleasant.