Beef-Steak for Winter Use

Raw steaks packed dry in a jar with saltpetre and kept for weeks in the cellar, then fried as usual.

From: Buckeye Cookery
Published: 1880
Yikes Scale: Big yikes

Exactly as printed, 1880

Cut the steak large, and the usual thickness; have ready a mixture made of salt, sugar and finely powdered saltpetre, mixed in the same proportion as for corning beef; sprinkle the bottom of a large jar with salt, lay in a piece of steak, and sprinkle over it some of the mixture, as much or a little more than you would use to season in cooking, then put in another slice, sprinkle, and so on till jar is filled, with a sprinkle of the mixture on top; over all, put a plate, with a weight on it, and set in a cool, airy place, where it will not freeze. This needs no brine, as it makes a brine of its own. Twenty-five or thirty pounds may be kept perfectly sweet in this way. Take out to use as wanted, and broil or fry as usual.

Buckeye Cookery, 1880. Public domain; transcription unaltered.

So what happens if I make it?

The saltpetre is unmeasured — “the same proportion as for corning beef,” which the reader is assumed to know. Nitrate is effective and safe only within a narrow range, and this gives no range at all.

The temperature is unstated too. “A cool, airy place, where it will not freeze” describes a northern cellar in winter, and describes nothing at all in a modern house.

Notes from the 21st century

Dry curing does work. It is a real preservation method with a long history. What it needs is measured salt, measured nitrite and a known temperature.
Modern curing salts are dyed pink. Specifically so nobody confuses them with table salt and gets the proportion catastrophically wrong.
Seasonal by necessity. The title says it: for winter use. The method depends entirely on the weather doing the refrigeration.

Also in this book

Bite of Serpent — Apply fire to the wound, thoroughly and immediately. Then whisky, to intoxication.
Raw Beef for Dysentery — Minced raw beef, a spoonful every four hours, for a patient with dysentery.
To Catch Wild Ducks or Geese Alive — Soak wheat in strong alcohol, scatter it where they feed, and collect them while drunk.

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