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MECHANICS AND FUNCTIONS
OF A SMOKE HOUSE
A prepatory report for running the
John Dickinson Smoke House
by Judith Quinn
History and info on building a smoke house and curing meat, history of life in early Delaware.
Thanks granny. Hope all is well with you.
>>>History and info on building a smoke house and curing meat, history of life in early Delaware.<<<
Granny, the Dickinson Mansion is about 20 miles from here. Have been there several times. Also, we have an Agricultural Museum about 18 miles away... They don’t do much in a very practical historical way though. Right now, there is controversy over a Muslim group that is holding meetings there - but let a Christian group try to get the same rooms for a meeting and it gets nixed...
We used to smoke some meats in our smokehouse (now long gone) We quit doing it when someone stole all our hams and bacon sides we had a second year in a row.
As I recollect, it was more an art than a science in the old smokehouses. Done wrong, you had rancid or putrid meat that was horrible. Done correctly you had some of the best tasting meat you can imagine. I would opt for the more controlled modern smokers that do a very good reliable job of preserving the meat. The problem there is that to have one large enough to do a whole hog is expensive.
Salting was big around here with Mackerel and fatback being common. Most stores used to have a keg of salt Mackerel that they sold from. Others carried it in small wooden boxes that were used for storing small items - I remember one filled with buttons and hooks for sewing (worn out clothes were stripped of those before the fabric was reused for rugs, stuffing, re-spinning or other uses - nothing got wasted). It was usually big for breakfast around here. Creamed salt mackerel on toast was a favorite of mine.
Few people know that this little State has been a mainstay in agriculture for a couple of centuries.
Did you know that Delaware was ‘The Peach State’ before Georgia was? There were huge dehydrators around here and the peach halves were dried and packed in barrels for shipment to the ‘city’ which meant Philadelphia or Baltimore. I have searched for traces of the dehydrators, and since they were all wood, they are long gone. They also made smoked peaches as a specialty. I have never tasted them though.
One of my Great Grandfathers had a cannery/packing house in Choptank Maryland (On the Choptank River - which empties into the Chesapeake Bay). The cannery had a railroad siding that went right out on the dock where the plant was.
Actually, that is what caused his death... One foggy morning as he was driving his horse and carriage to the plant, the locomotive was moving railcars and blew their whistle - The horse was already spooked by the fog, and the whistle frightened him and he reared up and came back onto the carriage.
Steam ships could also dock on the other side. They fresh packed in crates and baskets during the season, and canned the surplus. Shipments to Philadelphia went out by rail, and Annapolis and Baltimore’s went out by steamship.
Granny, you might be interested to know that he was a State Senator and repeatedly introduced Woman’s Suffrage legislation in Maryland until he finally got it passed.