Ham

Ham, properly the hind part or angle of the knee; but usually applied to the cured thigh of the hog or sheep, more especially the first. Ham-curing, or, what is the same thing, bacon-curing, is performed in a variety of methods, each country or district having its own peculiar treatment; these, however, relate to minor points. The essential operations are as follows: The meat is first well rubbed with salt, and either left on a bench that the brine may drain away, or covered up in a close vessel; after a few days it is rubbed again, this time with a mixture of salt and saltpetre, to which sugar is sometimes added, or with a mixture of salt and sugar alone. It is then consigned to the bench or tub for at least a week longer, after which it is generally ready for drying. Wet salting requires, on the whole, about three weeks; dry salting, a week longer. Mutton-hams should not be kept in pickle longer than about three weeks. Some hams are merely hung up to dry without being smoked; others, after being dried, are removed to the smoking-house, which consists of two and sometimes three stories; the fire is kindled in the lowest, and the meat is hung up in the second and third stories, to which the smoke ascends. The fire is kept up with supplies of oak or beech chips, though in some districts twigs of juniper, and in many parts of Great Britain peat, are used. Fir, larch, and such kinds of wood, on account of the unpleasant flavour they impart, are on no account to be used. The fire must be kept, night and day, in a smouldering state for three or four days, at the end of which time the ham, if not more than five or six inches deep, is perfectly smoked. As cold weather is preferable for the operation of curing, it is chiefly carried on during winter. Many of the country-people in those parts of England where wood and peat are used for fuel smoke hams by hanging them up inside large wide chimneys, a method common in Westmorland. The curing of beef and mutton hams is carried on chiefly in the north of England and Dumfriesshire in Scotland; that of pork-hams, on the other hand, is found in various countries, among the best known being those connected in commerce with the names of Belfast and Westphalia. Harris of Calne, Wiltshire, introduced an ammonia freezing-process available both summer and winter. Chicago (q.v.) is the chief centre of the enormous American industry of pork-packing. The imports of bacon and hams into the United Kingdom in 1888 amounted to 3,594,212 cwt., of a value of £8,343,387. Of this quantity the value from the United States was £3,874,170, from Denmark £1,389,047. The import of hams only in 1888 was 730,408 cwt., of the value of £1,929,602. The total value of the imports of bacon and hams in 1886 was £8,402,828; in 1894, £10,855,715. The total export of bacon and hams from the United States is valued at upwards of $30,000,000 a year. See PIG.