I recently found an old book of Confederate recipes dated 1863. Because of the shortages that the South was suffering, these recipes were modified to use the available ingredients. The book covered a number of things including cooking, recipes for treating the sick, preserving meat and other miscellaneous suggestions.
From the book:
Preserving Meat without Salt
“We need salt as a relish to our food, but it is not essential in the preservation of our meats. The Indians used little or no salt, yet they preserved meat and even fish in abundance by drying. This can be accomplished by fire, by smoke, or by sunshine, but the most rapid and reliable mode is by all of these agents combined. To do this select a spot having fullest command of sunshine. Erect there a wigwam five or six feet high, with an open top, in size proportioned to the quantity of meat to be cured, and protected from- the winds, so that all the smoke must pass through the open top. The meat cut into pieces suitable for drying (the thinner the better) to be suspended on rods in the open comb, and a vigorous smoke made of decayed wood is to be kept up without cessation. Exposed thus, to the combined influence of sunshine, heat and smoke, meat cut into slices not over an’ inch thick can be thoroughly cured in twenty-four hours. For thicker pieces there must be, of course, a longer time, and the curing of oily meat, such as pork, is more difficult than that of beef, venison or mutton.
To cure meat in the sun hang it On the South side of your house, as near to the wall as possible without touching.
Savages cure fish by pounding it fine, and exposing it to the bright sun.”
Yeast
“Boil one pound of good flour, a quarter of a pound of brown sugar and a little salt in two gallons of water for one hour. “When milk warm bottle it close, (I think that this means when it lukewarm, close the bottle) it will be fit lo use in twenty–four hours. One part of this will make eighteen pounds of bread.”
Since these recipes are direct from the book, you will have to do a bit of experimenting to figure them out. I am not sure how much one part of the yeast mixture is. One thing I’ve noticed about old recipes is that the writer assumes the reader lives in that same era and doesn’t have any questions about ingredients, amounts, or the procedure!
It’s still good to know that it’s possible to preserve meat with these two different, non-salt methods. Pioneer recipes, Great Depression recipes — I’ve learned something from all of them.
Howard
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