A little salted pork or bacon should always be kept in the house. I confess to having a decided prejudice against this meat, considering it unwholesome and dangerous, especially in cities, unless used in the smallest quantities. Yet pork makes a delicious flavoring for cooking other meats, and thin, small slices of breakfast bacon are a relishing garnish for beefsteak, veal cutlets, liver, etc. In the country, perhaps, there is less cause for doubt about its use, where the animal is raised with corn, and where much outdoor life will permit the taking of stronger food.

To Cure Bacon.

For every three hundred pounds of pork use fourteen pounds of common salt, and one pound each of brown sugar and saltpetre. Rub them into the meat, and let it lie for three weeks, rubbing and turning it occasionally. Then wipe dry, rub again with dry fine salt, wrap it in a thick cloth (canvas) or paper, and hang it in a cool, dry place.

Roast Little Pig.

I trust entirely to the following receipt. Any one who fancies can cook a little pig, not I.

The pig should be three weeks old, well cleaned, and stuffed with a dressing of this proportion: Two large onions, four times the quantity of bread-crumbs, three tea-spoonfuls of chopped sage, two ounces of butter, half a salt-spoonful of pepper, one salt-spoonful of salt, and one egg. Or it may be filled with a veal force-meat stuffing, if preferred; or, it may be stuffed with hot mashed potatoes. Sew it together with a strong thread, trussing its fore legs forward and its hind legs backward. Rub the pig with butter, flour, pepper, and salt. Roast it at first before a very slow fire, as it should be thoroughly done; or, if it is baked, the oven should not be too hot at first. Baste it very often. When done (in about three hours), place a cob or a potato in the mouth, having put something in at first to keep it open. Serve it with apple-sauce or tomato-sauce.

Roast Pork.

The roasting pieces are the spare rib, the leg, the loin, the saddle, the fillet, and the shoulder. They may be stuffed with a common well-seasoned sage stuffing. The skin, if left on, should be cut in lines forming little squares; if the skin is taken off, sprinkle a little pounded sage over all, and put over it a buttered paper. Be careful, in roasting pork, to put the meat far enough from the fire at first, as it must be thoroughly done. The rule for the time of roasting pork is twenty minutes for each pound. Baste it at first with butter, and afterward with its own drippings. A roast loin of pork is very nice (allowing it to remain well sprinkled with salt an hour or two before roasting) served with cabbage cooked with a little vinegar, or served with sauer-krout.

Broiled Pork Cutlets (Dubois).

Take a fresh neck of pork (free from fat); shorten the bones of the ribs, and remove those of the chine; cut six cutlets off each neck, taking them a little obliquely; trim them, season, and roll them in melted butter and bread-crumbs. Broil them. Pour into a stew-pan four or five table-spoonfuls of vinegar, and double its volume of stock or gravy; let it boil, and thicken it with a little flour. Pass it through a sieve, and add to it pepper and some spoonfuls of chopped pickles. Dish the cutlets in a circle, and pour over them the sauce; or pork cutlets may be fried or sautÉd in a stew-pan, in a little hot lard, and served with the same sauce.

Pork and Beans.

Soak a quart of beans overnight. The next day boil them with a sliced onion, one large onion to a quart of beans (they will not taste of the onion), and when they are almost done, put them into a baking-dish, taking out the onions. Almost bury in the centre of the beans a quarter of a pound of salt pork; pour in some of the water in which the beans were boiled, and bake about an hour.

Another way is to omit the onions, and after parboiling the beans put them into the bake-pan with one large spoonful of molasses and a quarter of a pound of pork, and bake them two hours.

Boston Baked Beans.

Put one and one-half pints of medium-sized navy beans into a quart bean-pot; fill it with water, and let it stand overnight. In the morning, pour off the water, and cover the beans with fresh water in which is mixed one table-spoonful of molasses. Put a quarter of a pound of pickled pork in the centre, leaving a quarter of an inch of pork above the beans. Bake them eight hours with a steady fire, and, without stirring the beans, add a cupful of hot water every hour but the last two. Earthen pots with narrow mouths are made expressly for baking beans. Cooking them in this manner, without first boiling them, renders each bean perfectly whole and at the same time thoroughly cooked. When done, place the pork in the centre of a platter, with the beans around it.

EntrÉe of Apples and Pork.

Cut sour apples (pippins) into slices without skinning them; fry or sautÉ them with small strips of pork. Serve both, tastefully arranged, on the same dish.

Sausages (Warne).

“Two pounds and a half of pork, fat and lean mixed (three times as much lean as fat), one ounce of fine salt, a quarter of a pound of pepper, two tea-spoonfuls of powdered sage, a quarter of a tea-spoonful of allspice, and a quarter of a tea-spoonful of cloves. Chop the meat as fine as possible: there are machines for the purpose. Mix the seasoning well through the whole; pack the sausage-meat down hard in stone jars, which should be kept in a cool place, well covered. When wanted for use, form them into little cakes, dip them in beaten egg, then in wheat flour, and fry them in hot lard.”

Always serve apple-sauce with pork sausages. Two dishes never suited better. For breakfast, it would be well to have a centre of apple-sauce on a platter, with sausages around, or vice versÂ. They are a fine garnish for a roast turkey.

It is said that sausages will keep forever, by frying them and putting them in little jars, with a cover of hot lard.

To Cure Hams (Mrs. Lestlie).

For one hundred pounds of fine pork take seven pounds of coarse salt, five pounds of brown sugar, two ounces of saltpetre, half an ounce of soda, and four gallons of water. Boil all together, and skim the pickle when cold. Pour it on the meat, which should first be rubbed all over with red pepper. Let hams and tongues remain in the pickle eight weeks. Before they are smoked, hang them up, and dry them two or three days. Then sew the hams in cases.

To Boil Ham.

If it is quite salt, let it soak twenty-four hours. Cut off the end of the knuckle-bone; put it into a pot with cold water at the back of the range to simmer slowly for eight hours; then take it off the fire, and let it remain in the water until nearly cold; then peel off the skin carefully, make spots at uniform distances with pepper, and wind fringed paper around the bone. Mrs. Lestlie boils her hams with a bed of hay in the bottom of the pot. Some sprinkle grated bread or crackers over the ham when trimmed, and brown it in the oven; others brush it thickly over with glaze. However well cooked, it would be utterly ruined if it were not cut into thin, neat slices for eating.

Ham and Eggs.

The ham, cut into thin slices, can be broiled or sautÉd. If broiled, spread over a little butter when cooked. The eggs can be fried; but they are more wholesome poached in salted water. In both cases they should be carefully cooked, neatly trimmed, and an egg served on each slice of ham.

To Fry or SautÉ Ham.

The ham should be cut into thin, neat slices, and sautÉd only for a minute in a hot sautÉ pan. If it is much more than thoroughly heated, it will become tough and dry.

Pork Fried in Batter, or Egged and Bread-crumbed.

Roll very thin slices of breakfast bacon or fat pork in fritter batter, or egg and bread-crumb them, and fry them in boiling lard. Serve on toast or fried mush as a dish by itself, or as a garnish for beefsteak, fried chickens, breaded chops, etc.

Mrs. Trowbridge’s Breakfast-bacon Dish.

Soak slices of bacon or pork in milk for fifteen minutes; then dip them into flour, and fry them in the sautÉ pan. When done, sautÉ some slices of potato in the same hot fat, and serve them in the centre of a hot dish, with a circle of the slices of pork around them.

Rashers of Pork (to serve with Beefsteak, Roast Beef, etc.).

Breakfast bacon should be cut very thin (one-eighth of an inch thick), and in strips three or four inches long. It should be fried in the sautÉ pan only long enough to become transparent, or thoroughly hot; if cooked crisp, it is ruined. The French usually serve these strips of bacon laid over beefsteak, roast beef, game, etc.

Sandwiches (Mrs. Geo. H. Williams), No. 1.

Cut some fresh bread very thin, and of square equal shapes. Chop some cold boiled ham very fine, and mix with it the yolks of one or two uncooked eggs, a little pepper and mustard. Spread some of this mixture over the buttered slices of bread; roll them, pinching each roll at the end to keep it in shape.

If there is difficulty in cutting fresh bread, use that which is a day old, then cut it in very thin slices, buttering it on the loaf before it is cut; cut the slices into little even squares or diamonds (the crust being all removed), spread with the chopped ham mixture before mentioned, and fit two squares together.

Sandwiches (New York Cooking-school), No. 2.

Chop fine half a pound of boiled ham, and season it with one table-spoonful of olive-oil, one table-spoonful of lemon-juice, a little cayenne or mustard, and rub it through a sieve. Butter the bread on the loaf before cutting it, and spread the ham between the slices.

Small Rolls, with Salad Filling.

Cut off a little piece of the top of a French roll, and remove carefully the crumb from the inside. Prepare a stuffing of cold chicken, tongue, and celery (cut in dice), mixed in Mayonnaise dressing, and fill the roll, covering the top with the small piece cut off.

This makes a very nice lunch dish, or a lunch for traveling. The rolls may be filled with cold cooked lobster, cut into little dice, and covered with a Mayonnaise dressing.

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