Meat Preserving.

Patea Mail, 7 August 1882, Page 4

Meat Preserving.

CHEAP AND SIMPLE PROCESS

A demonstration of a new method (under Jones’s patent) of meat preservation was recently given at the Cannon-street Hotel, when the efficacy of the process was proved in a practical way by the serving for luncheon of mutton killed on the Gth of March, or thirty-nine days before. The carcases from which the joints served up were cut had been kept in a butcher’s shop at a temperature varying between 50 and 60 deg. Fahrenheit. The experiment showed that (he mutton, of which boiled and roasted joints were served, was perfectly free from an}’ taint or taste of the antiseptic chemical used to preserve it, and that the meat retained its natural jucincss and flavor. It was, moreover, very tender.

The process differs from other applications of antiseptics to the preservation of meat in one important feature. The preservative substance (boracic acid) is injected into a vein while the creature though stunned by a blow on the head, is still alive, and the action of the heart is relied upon to pump it through every part of the body into which tho vascular system ramifies. In the room was shown the carcase of a sheep killed a month before, still in perfect condition, and to preserve which Soz. of boracic acid were used, the whole carcase weighing 741b. The two bind quarters of another sheep, killed on the 20tb of February, or fiftyfour days ago, were also shown. No difference was perceptible between the condition of one or the other. To pVeserve the latter, which weighed 891h., 6oz, of boracic acid had been used. As, however, a large proportion of the solution injected probably flows away with the blood when the creature is stuck by tho butcher two minutes after the injection of the boracic acid, it is impossible in the absence of any data from careful quantitative analysis to calculate the quantity remaining in the fibre of, say, half a pound of meat before cooking. But small as this quantity must be, there can be no doubt that introduced in this way into tho living organism it suffices to preserve, not only the carcase, but also the heart, liver, kidneys, and other organs of the body. The loss of weight on a sheep thus preserved and kept for one month has been found to be about 5 per cent.—Home News.