SECRETS OF MEAT CURING AND SAUSAGE MAKING TEXT

way, as it would be necessary for you to compete with other soaps on the market, and you are aware that laundry soap sells at a very low price and is put upon the market upon a very small margin of profit. You would also find it quite a task to make hard soap, and the time required would hardly justify you to undertake it on a small scale. If you can dispose of soft soap in your locality, we would advise you to use your surplus tallow in that way, but, of course, this suggestion from a financial point of view would depend entirely upon whether there is a sufficient demand for such an article in your vicinity. Possibly you could work up a trade among private families and sell it to them for scrubbing purposes, also to hotels, stores and restaurants, but as your town is small, you might have difficulty in disposing of a sufficient quantity to make it pay you. On the other hand, it would not cost you much to make the experiment. You are surrounded by a good hog-feeding country, and it is possible that you could dispose of quite a quantity of soft soap to the farmers, as it is a very fine thing for hogs, and the truth of the matter is, their hogs would be much better off if they would feed it frequently. You might be benefited more by this suggestion than by sales from other sources. The following is a recipe for making soft soap with potash: To 20 pounds of clear grease or tallow take 17 pounds of pure white potash. Buy the potash in as fine lumps as it can be procured, and place it in the bottom of the soap barrel, which must be water-tight and strongly hooped. Boil the grease and pour it boiling hot upon the potash; then add two large pailfuls of boiling hot water; dissolve 1 pound of borax in 2 quarts of boiling hot water and stir all together thoroughly. Next morning add 2 pails of cold water and stir for half an hour; continue this process until a barrel containing thirty-six gallons is filled up. In a week or even less, it will be ready for use. The borax can be turned into grease while boiling, and also 1 pound of rosin. Soap made in this manner always comes, and is a first-rate article, and will last twice as long as that bought at a soap factory. The grease must be tried out, free from scraps, ham rinds, bones, or any other debris; then the soap will be as thick as jelly, and almost as clear. To make soft soap hard put into a kettle four pailfuls of soft soap, and stir in it by degrees about one quart of common salt. Boil until all the water is separated from the curd, remove the fire from the kettle and draw off the water with a siphon (a yard or so of rubber hose will answer); then pour the soap into a wooden form in which muslin has been placed. For this purpose a wooden box, sufficiently large and tight, may be employed. When the soap is firm turn out to dry, cut into bars with a brass wire and let it harden. A little powdered rosin will assist the soap to harden and give it a yellow color. If the soft soap is very thin, more salt should be added. PLANS FOR SAUSAGE FACTORY. _Query.--O. C. L. writes: I am now in business again on my own hook, so please send me your book on Meat Curing and Sausage Making. I will, in the near future, equip my market with an up-to-date sausage factory. I have the following machinery: 1 six-horse power gasoline engine, silent cutter, Enterprise machine, 1 bone cutter, 1 steam boiler for rendering lard, cooking sausage, etc. The room I intend to place this machinery in is 15×25 feet; would like to hear some of your suggestions, and plans in placing the machinery; would appreciate this very much. Has the freezing of pork sausage any detrimental effect on the flavor of the sausage? Accept my well wishes._ Ans.--The machinery you enumerate will give you a sausage plant that is quite complete. We think, however, that your room is a little bit small in which to place so much machinery. If you could put the boiler and rendering kettle in another room, away from the sausage factory, it would be better. You would probably be able to make such an addition as would answer your purpose at a very small cost. This arrangement would make it much more convenient because the boiler and the rendering tank in your sausage factory will make it very hot. The arrangement or disposal of the machinery will not make material difference in a room of the size mentioned. You can arrange it most any way to best suit your convenience. The freezing of pork sausage certainly has a most detrimental effect on the flavor. Freezing meat always tends, to some extent, to spoil the flavor of the meat. When the albumen of the meat is frozen, and is afterwards thawed out, the albumen leaves the cells of the meat and in that way the flavor is lost and the meat becomes insipid. PURIFYING TALLOW. _Query.--T. W. C. writes: “I am tanking mutton and beef tallow together at 40 pounds pressure, and would like to know the best way to use your tallow purifier so I can use my tallow with cottonseed oil to make a lard compound.”_ Ans.--It would not be practicable to use our Lard and Tallow Purifier in the tank. It can be used to greatest advantage in an open jacket kettle. You can treat the tallow in the jacket kettle after it is rendered and comes from the steam tank. HOW PACKERS BRAND THEIR HAMS _Question.--W. Z. writes: How do packers brand their hams._ Answer.--Packers brand their hams with Ink made from the following formula: Glucose 2¼ lbs. Lampblack ¼ to ½ lb. Water 1½ lbs. Grain Alcohol ½ pint Place the Glucose and water in a dish and heat on stove until it becomes thin. Now take the Lampblack, put it in a separate dish and add enough of the water and Glucose so as to make a thick paste; work this paste up until all of the lumps are dissolved. Then take the Lampblack paste and gradually mix it into the water and Glucose until the desired shade of color is secured. After mixing thoroughly remove from fire and set aside to cool. When cool add the ½ pint of Grain Alcohol, mixing thoroughly. Keep in a corked bottle or can. Spread a small quantity of the Ink thus made over a pad which is easily made by taking 10 thicknesses of cheese cloth and tacking them on top of a flat board. The branding itself is done with an iron brand containing such letters or other marking as you wish to appear on the hams. The branding should be done before the hams are put into the smoke house. STARTING A BUTCHER BUSINESS _Query.--M. E. A. writes: Will you please forward me another copy of your desirable book, “How to Cure Meat and Make Sausage”? And if it is not too much trouble, I would like to have you advise how it is best to start in the butcher and pork packing business in a small way. I have about $700 capital and wish to ask how is the best way to fit up a retail store without too much expense and yet to have it look good, and also to fit up a sausage kitchen and have everything that a man needs to run the business successfully. I may as well state that I have had lots of experience, but after reading your book and the advice that it gives I am sure that even experienced men can learn a lot by reading it._ Ans.--With such a limited amount of capital, it would be advisable to buy second-handed fixtures. These can always be obtained much cheaper than new ones, and you can get good fixtures which will answer the purpose, but they must be neat, clean and in good repair. If you intend to do your own butchering, our advice is that you make arrangements with some butcher who has a slaughter house, and where you can do your butchering, and pay him a certain amount for each animal slaughtered. A very important point that we advise you to follow is to sell everything for cash only, as your capital is not sufficient to give credit to anyone. Were you to give credit and make a lot of book accounts, you would soon run out of money and would not be able to buy large stock and supplies for your market. We also advise that you induce your customers to take their meat home with them, and thus relieve yourself of the necessity of keeping a horse and wagon for delivery purposes. This would save quite an outlay in capital, and a great deal of expense and time. You can then announce with a small advertisement in the daily paper that you sell for cash only, and that you can afford to be more liberal with your customers than you could if you carried accounts, and because you do not incur the expense of delivery. Such an advertisement with placards in your store, no doubt, would result favorably. You must remember at all times that your capital is limited and that you must “trim your sails” accordingly. It is the over-reaching the limits of the possibilities of capital that make the most failures among tradesmen. We would not advise you to advertise meat at a cut price because you sell for cash; people do not want stuff that is cheap, for if you sell stuff at a low price, they imagine there is something wrong with it. Charge the same price that all the other butchers do, and in that way, keep their friendship. If a woman gets something that she doesn’t like and brings it back, tell her that you are very glad she brought it back, if it did not suit her, because you never want any of your customers to keep anything that does not please them. A sausage room can be rigged up very cheap; all you need to start with is a small Enterprise grinder, so that you can grind up your trimmings and work them into sausage, and by working the meat trimmings up into the different formulas that we give in our book, “Secrets of Meat Curing and Sausage Making,” you will not have any loss, as all of your trimmings can be worked up to good advantage. You also should make a great display of your own cured corned beef and turn out fine corned beef, so that when your customers buy it, they are well pleased. The main thing in the success of running a retail market is that the butcher understands how to buy his live stock so that he gets the right quality of beef and gets it at the right price. If you have good meats to sell you will have no trouble in selling them, but if you have poor goods to sell, you may sell them to a customer once or twice, but the third time the customer will not come near you. The same thing holds good with you; if you were buying some of your supplies from the jobber and the jobber did not send you good goods, you may try him once more and if he again sends you poor goods, the third time you certainly will not buy from him, but you will go to some other jobber who will give you the best goods for your money. Your customers are just as smart and as sensitive as you are, and want the same kind of treatment that you like, so if you will always treat your customers as you would like to be treated yourself if you were buying meat at a market, you are bound to meet with success. CUTTING UP MEATS--NECESSARY FOR EXPERIENCE. _Query.--J. J. writes: I have decided to go into the meat business and would like to know if you can advise me of some booklet or pamphlet on cutting up meat; also let me know the price of your book, and if you know of a good firm handling butcher supplies and refrigerators._ Ans.--We judge from your inquiry that you are inexperienced in the meat business, and if such is the case, we would advise that you go to work for some good butcher for a while before going into the business for yourself. You could there learn the practical side of the business, and provided you do not now understand how to cut up meat to the greatest profit, you could acquire knowledge upon these points which would be of more value to you than volumes that could be written upon the subject. We most emphatically advise you to learn the business thoroughly before embarking into it on your own account. We take great pleasure in sending you our booklet, “Secrets of Meat Curing and Sausage Making,” which you will find of great value to you in teaching you to cure meat and make sausage. IMITATION FREEZE-EM PICKLE. _Query.--L. M. writes: “M---- & ----, from whom I buy most of my butcher supplies, handle an imitation of your Freeze-Em Pickle which they claim is the same as your preparation. I do not want it and will not have it. They tried to convince me that what they had is what I want, but I have used Freeze-Em Pickle for years and, knowing from your advertisements that there are imitations of it, I want to steer clear of them. Will you please send me the name of a jobber handling Freeze-Em Pickle near me?”_ Ans.--This is a clear case of an attempt for a substitution of spurious goods for those of our manufacture. These dealers can not help knowing that our customers want =Freeze-Em-Pickle=, and nothing else, but for the sake of reaping an illegitimate profit, they misrepresent imitation goods as being the same as ours. We wish to state that there is only one =Freeze-Em-Pickle=, and all claims to the contrary are absolutely false. They are merely the tricks of illegitimate dealers to pirate the good reputation made by our preparations. In order to be convinced of the superiority of =Freeze-Em-Pickle=, it is only necessary to test it with any preparation purporting to be the same or similar to it and selling under similar names, which are calculated to deceive. SOURING OF HAM IN SMOKE HOUSE. _Query.--M. P. M. writes: “I am having trouble with my hams souring in the smokehouse. They seem to get too much smoke. What can you suggest that will help me to avoid this trouble and to keep my hams sweet?”_ Ans.--You are mistaken in supposing that your hams sour from getting too much smoke; that is not the trouble. Hams will not sour from such cause. Your trouble is owing entirely to the fact that the hams are not properly and fully cured before going into the smoke house. Smoke aids to preserve hams and will not cause them to sour. They sour because the portion that has not been thoroughly cured, which is generally close to the bone, has not been reached by the brine. In many cases souring comes from imperfect chilling of meat before putting it into the brine; then again you may not have overhauled the meat at the proper time and with the frequency which good curing requires. In the first place, the hog should not be killed when overheated or excited. Second, after they have been scalded and scraped, they must be dressed as quickly as possible, washed out thoroughly with clean water, then split and allowed to hang in a well ventilated room until partly cooled off. They should then be run into a cooler or chilling room as quickly as possible, where the temperature should be reduced to 32 to 34 degrees Fahrenheit. They should be allowed to thus chill for 24 hours for medium size hogs. When hogs are properly chilled, the temperature of the inside of the ham or shoulder will not be more than one to one and one-half degrees higher than the cooler. Those without ice machinery for curing, who are using common ice houses, can employ the crushed ice method for chilling the meat. By this is meant to put the meat on the floor and throw cracked ice over it, and thus allow it to remain over night. After being thoroughly chilled, the hams must undergo the various processes which you will find set forth in our book, “Secrets of Meat Curing and Sausage Making,” which we take pleasure in sending to you free of charge. If you will follow the directions contained in this book you will never have trouble with soured hams from imperfect curing or other causes. CLEANING CASINGS. _Query.--S. & H. write: “I would like to know if you have any preparations for cleaning casings. We clean all the casings we get and would like to get some chemicals to take the tallow and lard off of them.”_ Ans.--There is no preparation that will free the lard from casings. If you use something that is strong enough to take off the fat, it will eat up the casings as well. The only thing practicable that can be done is to wash the casings thoroughly and change the water a number of times. In the last washing water it would be advisable to put in some washing soda as that will soften the water and assist in cleaning the casings. The fat you will have to remove by hand. There are machines made for removing the fat from casings, but it will not pay you to go to the expense of making such a purchase unless you clean a very large amount of casings per day. CAUSE OF “RUSTY” MEAT. _Query.--R. J. B. writes: “We keep our meat in an ice box 35 degrees cold and the barrels we used in curing it were galvanized, and we have used them for five years. We use the regular pickling salt. Our meat comes out rusty. What can you suggest?”_ Ans.--If your cooler is kept at 35 degrees, you must have an ice machine instead of the regular ice box or cooler, and 35 degrees is too cold for curing purposes. An even temperature of 38 degrees is the proper one for curing meat, and all packers who use ice machines should endeavor to keep their coolers at a temperature not varying from 37 to 39 degrees, and they never should be allowed to get above 40 degrees. Meat will not cure in any brine or take on enough salt when dry salted if stored in a room that is below 36 degrees. If meat is packed even in the strongest kind of brine and put into a cooler which is kept at 32 to 33 degrees and thus left at this degree of cold for three months, it will come out of the brine only partly cured; it will, therefore, only keep for a short time and will start to decompose when taken into a higher temperature. If you have used galvanized iron tanks for five years, it is possible that the zinc or the galvanizing is worn off on the inside of the vats so as to expose the iron. Brine will rapidly rust iron and that will cause your meat to become rusty. Galvanized iron tanks for curing are all right until the galvanizing is worn off and the moment this happens, the tanks are useless for curing purposes. Salt that is rusted or salt that is shoveled with a rusty shovel will also cause rusty meat. It is absolutely necessary that the salt be pure and free from rust. If live stock is driven for some distance and slaughtered while it is overheated, the meat will not cure properly and will also turn out rusty. Stock that has been driven should always be allowed to remain in the pens over night. We send you our book, “Secrets of Meat Curing and Sausage Making,” which you will find full of valuable information in reference to curing of meat. If you will follow the directions contained therein closely, you will always have good results. SALT FOR BRINE--BOILING BRINE--ROPY BRINE. _Query.--W. M. writes: “Is common barrel salt or rock salt the best and cheapest to use for making brine? I have been using rock salt and I think it is sweet, but in using rock salt I have to boil it in order to dissolve the salt. Is it necessary to boil the water if it is pure? I am having trouble with my brine. It becomes jelly-like in summer and in winter. What is the cause of this?”_ Ans.--Evaporated salt, or what is known as the ordinary barrel salt of a good quality, is generally approved by butchers for making brine. Rock salt is much used by the large packers, as it is a stronger salt, but their facilities for curing meat are altogether different from those of the butcher and the ordinary curer. It is not necessary to boil the water for brine if you know it to be perfectly pure. If its purity is doubted, it should always be boiled and the impurities which rise to the top should be thoroughly skimmed off, or if they precipitate the water should be carefully drawn off. When brine becomes jelly-like, you mean that it gets ropy. This condition is owing to a great many causes; sometimes it is due to the sugar which may be of low grade or unrefined, or where molasses and syrup are used, it quite often results. The best grade of granulated