THRIVING after the FALL

The Index · A subject

Salt and brine

Salt for the table, the animals, the brine and the cure, and how to make it when the shop is gone.

9 documents · 4 chapters · 4 dishes · 70 rows

In the chapters

Documents 9

On the Menu

Salt pork Salt-and-dill cured pike or zander Brined and smoked fish Salt

Calculators

Annual salt

In the Workshop

Salt from the road: what the wash removes

Letters

The salt in your blood

Sources

  • Book Toldrá (ed.), Handbook of Fermented Meat and Poultry
  • Book Katz, The Art of Fermentation
  • Book Kindstedt, Cheese and Culture, and Caldwell, Mastering Artisan Cheesemaking
  • Book Witthöft, Das Lüneburger Salz
  • Regulation Regulation (EC) No 1333/2008, Annex II, E 249 to E 252
  • Guide FDA Fish and Fishery Products Hazards and Controls Guidance
  • Primary Cassiodorus, Variae XII.24 (Barnish translation)

All the sources

In the log 70

  • 43 confirmed
  • 22 amended
  • 1 partly confirmed
  • 4 unresolved
  • 24 marked for safety
  • F1 amended Safety Ergot: alkaloids, gangrene/convulsions, St Anthony's fire; brine at ~1/6 salt (160 g/l) floats sclerotia, wash and dry at once; EU limit 0.5 mg/kg alkaloids in rye flour …
  • A13 amended Safety Colostrum 3–4 l (10 % BW) within 2 h, second feed at 12 h, gut closure absolute by 24–36 h; calf that missed it scours and dies in week three; scours: 1 l warm water, …
  • A16 amended Safety Whey from salted cheese poisons a pig without other water (salt toxicity); raw potato and sprouts carry solanine and raw starch passes unused, boil and discard water; …
  • A7 amended Safety Nitrate NO3-N ppm DM: <1,500 safe; 1,500–5,000 half the ration with safe hay; 5,000–9,000 a third; >9,000 never; frosted, drought-stressed or over-manured green crops; …
  • B16 confirmed Safety Blood: bowl under the wound before the knife is out, stirred 5 min with 1 tbsp salt/l until cool, clots in a minute unstirred, 3–4 l from a 100 kg pig, used same day; …
  • B17 unresolved Safety Kochwurst safety: blood sausage cooked at 80 °C never boiling 60–90 min until it weeps clear; keeps a week in the cold, longer smoked; bursts if boiled or filled tight; …
  • E2 amended Safety Eel: salt bath as killing method banned as cruelty; law's method blow to head then spine cut behind the head (Genickschnitt); moves after death
  • E5 amended Safety Both parasites killed by cooking to 60 °C at the bone, by freezing at −20 °C for 24 h through, or by heavy long salting; not by light brine, vinegar, dill or cold smoke
  • E8 confirmed Safety Household rule: hot-smoked fish 4–5 days in the cellar in open air, 2 on the summer table; never a sealed jar, bag or under oil; keep for months only as salt-dried fish …
  • S1 amended Safety Pink curing salt (6.25 % NaNO₂) at 2.5 g per kg meat, never more than 3 g; about 150 ppm ingoing nitrite
  • S2 amended Safety Saltpetre (KNO₃) 1.5 to 3 g per kg only in cures of four weeks or more
  • S4 amended Safety Strong brine 18 to 20 % for pork and fish; pork about 2 days per kg of thickness; fish 2 to 4 h fillets, 12 to 24 h whole
  • S5 confirmed Safety Light brine 3.5 to 5 % of total weight for lacto-fermentation
  • S6 amended Safety Cheese brine: saturated, soured with whey or vinegar, calcium salt added; unsoured brine gives slimy rind; 6 to 12 h per kg
  • S7 amended Safety Road salt and softener salt are safe to eat after washing and boiling down; anti-caking agents safe at use levels
  • R1 amended Safety Sauerkraut 20 g salt per kg (18 to 30 range); brined vegetables 35 to 50 g per kg total; 18 to 22 °C first week then cellar
  • R4 amended Safety Mould on brine surface: skim if vegetables submerged, brine still safe
  • M4 amended Safety Mozzarella kept at most 3 days in light soured brine (15 to 20 g/l); Listeria grows in the cold and endangers the pregnant and the old
  • M5 amended Safety Cheese brine: saturated, soured with whey, calcium added, skimmed, never discarded; wheel 12 h per kg
  • M9 amended Safety Calf vell: salt at 15 % of its weight plus half its weight in water, 18 to 21 °C, 3 to 7 days; dry below 21 °C; grind 1:8 in sour whey with 4 to 5 % salt; keeps 6 months …
  • D11 amended Safety Weisse variant: sour unboiled wort with a handful of crushed raw malt and a spoonful of sour-crock brine at 35 to 40 °C for a day, then pitch beer yeast
  • J2 confirmed Safety Well at least 30 m from and uphill of privy, midden, pig and stall; sand filters nothing; nitrate from manure reaches the well within a season; nitrate causes …
  • J7 amended Safety When the last canner gasket hardens canning is over; low-acid food is salted, smoked, dried, soured or cellared, never sealed (botulism)
  • J8 unresolved Safety The three narrows demand daylight-to-dark heavy labour at 490 kcal/h in June to August heat: water, salt (Ch 11's 8.5 kg is for the year), rest at midday, and the risk …
  • P1 amended Table salt in a Berlin shop comes from a mine near Bernburg on the Saale
  • A22 confirmed German (and Brandenburg) soils selenium-poor, feed supplementation supplies eggs and pork; phytate halves zinc absorption from whole-grain diets; inland goitre, iodised …
  • A54 unresolved CMT: 3 % sodium lauryl sulphate + bromocresol purple, equal parts with 2 ml milk, swirl 10 s, scores 0/T/1/2/3, gel ≈ >310,000 cells/ml; udder paste turmeric-ginger-salt …
  • A58 confirmed Bench details: teat dip iodine or strong brine; cool milk below 10 °C within an hour; broody test on china eggs two nights, candling at 7 and 14 days, chick crumb or …
  • B32 confirmed Calf for rennet (Ch 14): under two weeks, milk-fed only, same gun lightest cartridge, throat stick, ~20 kg meat, vell salted and hung the same hour
  • B34 confirmed Legging: ring at hock and knee, slit inside of legs, feet off at the break joint below the hock; fisting to keep the fell; knife edge to the hide; hide off the back last …
  • B39 confirmed Cow counted: 500 kg lowland cow dresses ~54 % → ~270 kg carcass, ~175 kg boneless, 40 kg bone, 30–40 kg fat; 175 kg = four people's German annual beef; quartered among …
  • B40 confirmed Pig: pale weeping meat after 10 min chase (PSE, no salt uptake); restraint two people, corner/board or jaw snare; head on for the hang so cheeks, ears, tongue, brain …
  • B43 confirmed Wellfleisch: head halved, brain out; head, feet, tail and belly trimmings simmered 1.5 h in salted water, eaten at noon with sauerkraut; cheeks, head meat, rind, tongue …
  • B44 confirmed Blood sausage / Grützwurst: per litre blood 1 kg boiled rind and head meat, 300 g scalded back-fat dice, 18 g salt/kg of whole, marjoram, pepper, allspice, boiled barley …
  • B45 confirmed Casings: small intestine ~20 m, stripped, turned over a stick under water, scraped with the back of a knife, rinsed, salted, keeps a year, soak an hour; Krause (large …
  • B46 confirmed Eight German pig parts and destinations: Schinken 9–10 kg each to dry salt (Ch 11); Bug 6–7 kg roasts and sausage; Rücken/Kotelettstrang chops and Kassler; Kamm best …
  • B53 confirmed The year: cow a village, 45 kg a house; pig a household; second spring pig harder to keep; 50 hens a year (old hens and cockerels of Ch 8), the only fresh meat …
  • B54 confirmed Fat: cow 30–40 kg fat and 40 kg bone; pig 12 kg fat and 10 kg bone; render within 12 h or hold ≤7 °C (Reg 853/2004); suet 86–90 % lipid, trim 62–76 %; dry rendering …
  • B55 confirmed Storage: stoneware crock with lid in the cellar, tallow a year, lard 6–9 months, salt layer on top; enemies light, warmth, air, iron/copper; rancid = paint smell, not …
  • B56 confirmed Tallow melts 45–50 °C; candle: twisted linen/cotton wick dipped 20–30 times in wet-rendered tallow, slumps in August; potash soft soap hardened by boiling with salt …
  • B59 confirmed Hide salting: a third to half its weight in salt, fold flesh to flesh after 24 h, resalt, keeps months cold; soak 2 days; lime 1 kg slaked lime/20 l, stirred daily, 7–14 …
  • E53 partly confirmed Smoke: drying, phenols (antiseptic and flavour), heat; keeping by salt, drying and cold
  • E54 confirmed Brine conversion: 70–80 °SAL = 18.5–21.1 % = 1.88–2.23 lb/US gal = ~225–270 g per litre of water; matches Ch 11's 220–250 g/l; never above 90 °SAL; brine < 15.5 °C; …
  • E56 confirmed Cold smoke ≤ 30–33 °C, no kill, safety by salt, freezing and cold; hot smoke Torry three steps 30 °C 30–60 min, 50 °C 30–45 min, 80 °C to core; core blank in source; …
  • E58 amended Salt fish: lean species only, split, dry salt ¼–⅓ of weight 7–10 days cold, air-dried 2–3 weeks in cold dry months to > 50 % weight loss, keeps a year in a dry loft, …
  • S10 amended Egg floats at about 10 to 12 % brine; potato floats at 3 to 5 %
  • S12 confirmed 128 kg salt budget and breakdown
  • S13 confirmed Fuel arithmetic: Baltic about 9 t beech for 128 kg salt; sea about 2 t; near-saturated brine a few hundred kg
  • S14 confirmed Cassiodorus, Variae XII.24, c. 537: no one does not want salt
  • S15 confirmed Lüneburg saltworks first recorded 956 (Otto I to St Michael); salt boiling created the Lüneburg Heath
  • S16 confirmed Agricola, De re metallica 1556, Book XII on salt
  • S18 confirmed Sperenberg borehole 1867 to 1871, 1,271 m, deepest in the world at the time; rock salt from about 90 m
  • S19 confirmed Berlin road-salt winter stocks (thousands of tonnes, BSR depots)
  • S21 confirmed Prussian salt monopoly ended 1867 (Zollverein); German Salzsteuer abolished 1 January 1993
  • S22 confirmed German daily salt intake about 9 g; most from processed food
  • S8 confirmed Saturated brine 26.4 % by weight = 100 °SAL; each 10 ° about 2.6 %
  • S9 unresolved Salinometer temperature error about 4 ° at 30 °C vs 15 °C
  • M26 confirmed Saturated brine: 26 parts in a hundred of brine, about 360 g salt per litre of water, grains left on the vat floor as the cue; half a day (12 h) per kg of wheel
  • M36 confirmed Butter: cream ripened a day at 20 °C, chilled to 10; churn 15 to 40 min; wash at most a quarter of the cream volume; salt 15 to 20 g/kg; 10 litres of milk to half a …
  • M40 confirmed Goat's cheese: 10 l, 150 ml whey, 90 min, 3 to 4 drops rennet (a scant teaspoon of home-made), 24 h, drain 24 h, 120 g, 2 % salt with beech ash, 10 days at 85 % RH
  • M43 confirmed Bloomy soft cheese: two days cooler and drier after salting, then the wet; keep below 14 °C; eat at 3 to 4 weeks
  • D41 amended Mary the Jewess and the bain-marie; al-anbiq; al-Razi distilling before 900; Brunschwig, Liber de arte distillandi, Strasbourg 1500, lute of linen, salt water and egg …
  • T13 confirmed Erasmus De civilitate morum puerilium 1530, written for Henry of Burgundy (aged 11), ~130 editions in a century, translated widely; rules quoted (reaching first, licking …
  • T21 confirmed Medieval bread trencher: tranchier, four-day-old coarse bread ~4 in × ½ in, given to the poor or the dogs; wooden trenchers by early 16th c.; Newcastle 1499–1500 import …
  • T30 confirmed Firing stages: 100–200 °C free water, 450–600 °C dehydroxylation (irreversible), 573 °C quartz inversion, 800–900 °C bonfire/pit earthenware, > 1,200 °C salt-glaze …
  • T33 confirmed Salt glaze: Rhineland since late Middle Ages, needs ~1,200–1,250 °C, salt thrown into firebox, HCl gas; a village kiln, not a household fire (link to Ch 18's specialists)
  • T36 confirmed Beeswax: mp 63–65 °C; render in water bath at 65–70 °C, strain, float and re-melt; dip at 70–75 °C; mould at 65–70 °C; shrinks ~10 % so hold back a tenth and top up; …
  • T42 confirmed Soft soap: 1 kg tallow to 200 g potash (Ch 9) or 3–4 l egg-floating lye; tallow at 40–45 °C, lye in a stream, stir to trace, self-heating, 2–3 h to translucent jelly; …
  • T47 confirmed Spreewald stoneware salt-glazed since the 14th c.; Görzke potters' guild 1706 and kilns still working; Glindow bricks 1716 to 1945 from clay 35 to 38 % CaCO3; Zehdenick …
  • J28 confirmed Consumables list: files, gaskets, jar lids, needles, rennet, sulphur, matches, glass, salt; stockpile or trade; Ch 2's mine for files