Recipe no. 280 from Jean-Baptiste Reboul's La Cuisinière provençale (1909), page 137.
Ingredients
- water
- salt
- brown sugar
- saltpetre
- meat
- thyme
- rosemary
- juniper berries
Preparation
- Preparing the brineBoil 10 litres of water with 3 kilograms of salt, 750 grams of brown sugar and 75 grams of saltpetre, skim, pour into an earthenware pot or small cask, then let cool.
- SoakingRub the meat and put it into the brine, adding aromatics such as thyme, rosemary and juniper berries.
- Salting timeLeave to steep according to the type of meat: about 4 to 5 days for a breast, 3 weeks for a ham, about 10 days for a beef tongue, proportionally to the size for other pieces.
Reboul's text
Boil 10 litres of water with 3 kg of salt, 750 grams of brown sugar and 75 grams of saltpetre; skim and pour into an earthenware pot or small cask; let cool.
First rub your meat as in the previous article and put it into this brine. Aromatics such as thyme, rosemary, juniper berries, etc. may be added.
A breast should remain about 4 to 5 days in this brine; a ham 3 weeks; a beef tongue about 10 days, and any other piece proportionally to its size. Both these salting methods can be applied equally to beef and to pork.
Small Provençal glossary for this recipe
Reboul writes in French: no Provençal word appears in this recipe, apart from the dish's name itself. The table below gives the Provençal equivalents of the words used, in mistralian spelling, translated by Lingua Nostra. Each form is attested in our Provençal-English dictionary; click to open the entry.
| Provençal | English |
|---|---|
| aigo-sau | brine |
| bouie | boil |
| escuma | skim |
| lengo | beef tongue |
| aroumat | aromatics |
| saupètro | saltpetre |
| genèbre | juniper |
Source: Jean-Baptiste Reboul, La Cuisinière provençale, Marseille, 1909, recipe no. 280, page 137. Public domain. Transcription, formatting and Provençal glossary by Lingua Nostra.