Rensselaer Republican, Volume 15, Number 19, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 18 January 1883 — A Caterer on Meat. [ARTICLE]

A Caterer on Meat.

Fresh meat of every description should be hung up in a dry, cool place, and carefully wiped every day. It ought never to lay long in a dish. The time it should be kept varies with the weather—in cold, dry weather it will keep fresh much longer than in moist, warm weather. Game will keep longer than butcher meat —say, two weeks—birds being kept with the feathers on, but not drawn, and vension and rabbits paunched, but not skinned. Beef will require from four to ten days’ keeping, or even longer in cold weather; and mutton, if well managed, will sometimes hang a fortnight or three weeks without spoiling—the longer the better. As young meat, however, —veal, lamb and mutton—spoils very quickly, one, two or three days at the utmost suffices for it. Fowls will keep for a week and turkeys a fortnight, but a goose not above nine or ten days. In plucking birds which have been kept some time, care should be taken not to break the skin, which will have become rather tender. There are various ways of keeping meat sweet and of removing the bad smell after it has become slightly tainted. One mode is to rub it over with coarsely-pounded charcoal, which has the property of absorbing the putrescent gases, and thus prevents the bad smell. The charcoal must, of course, be washed off before coolfing. Another, way is to paint the meat all over with a solution of salicylic acid, or rubbing the meat with the dry acid is the simplest method, and wul do for all household purposes.— The Caterer. The Kansas City Times reports that its bookkeeper suffered very severely, and for a long time, with rheumatism. He tried St. Jacobs Oil and was cured by one bottle of it.