mechanics and functions of a smoke house - University of Delaware ...

120 and 150 pounds" to Dickinson in Wilmington. 28 In fact, very fat hogs
were undesirable. Upon reading of an pound hog raised in Rhode Island
(ca. 1800), J. Boardley of Philadelphia expresses the sentiment; "Where in is
the advantage of having such a huge mass of coarse meat in one, more than in
three or four hogs of a better meat."29 Mary Randolph, in her receipt book
Virginia Housewife (1836), claims that "Hogs are in the highest perfection,
from two and one half to four years old, and make the best bacon, when they
do not weigh more than 150 to 160 at farthest. ,,30 We may assume then that
the pigs of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries were considerably
smaller than modern swine. It may have taken as many as 10-12 hogs of
this size to feed a family for a year.
An additional item of note is the distinction made between types
pigs. Pigs be eaten as pork different from those destined to be bacon
and hams. The type of animal is different and the feeding is altered to suit
the purpose for which the hog is Maria Eliza Rundell acknowledges
the distinction in her cook book, A New System of Domestic C90kery,
pUblished first in Boston in 1 She explainsthst Bacon-hogs "are kept to
size." sides the hog are ma,oeinto bacon, and the inside is
cut out withveryliftle meat to the bone. The bacon is the whole outside: and
.contains; a fore-leg and a ham (hind-leg)."ln contrast "Porkers are not so old
as hogs; their flesh is whiter and less rich, but it is not so tender."31
Because of the primacy of pork products in the diet the period, and
my assumption that it was generally pork orbacon hanging in the Dickinson
Smoke House, I will describe the curing and smoking process accordingly.
process is applicable to beef and mutton as well as pork, and thus to
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