These are eaten raw, and will not keep so long as other smoked meats.
Mix together in equal proportions, salt and brown sugar, and rub them
hard into the hams with your hand. Pack them in a cask, sprinkling
dry salt between them, and let them lie eight days, rubbing them over
every day with dry salt and sugar. Next mix equal parts of fine salt,
molasses, and a teaspoonful of saltpetre to every two hams. Take the
hams out of the pickle, go over them with a brush dipped in cider
vinegar, then in the new mixture. Empty the cask, wash it out with cold
water, and repack the hams, dripping from the sticky bath, scattering
fine salt over each. Let them lie eight days longer in this. Wash off
the pickle first with tepid water, until the salt crystals are removed;
then sponge with vinegar, powder them with bran while wet, and smoke a
fortnight, or, if large, three weeks. Wrap in brown paper that has no
unpleasant odor, stitch a muslin cover over this, and whitewash, unless
you mean to use at once. Chip or shave for the table.