Pork is usually cut for market in the manner illustrated in figure No.
10.
The back is fat and is used for salt pork or lard. The ribs are used for
spare-ribs, and the loin or chine, which is the backbone with its
adhering meat, is used for roasts or chops. The legs are roasted, if
fresh, or they are cured, by salting and smoking, for hams, sugar being
used in the salting process, which gives the name “sugar-cured hams”;
the shoulders are treated in the same way and may be used very much as
hams, although the flesh is not so thick and the proportion of bone is
greater. The belly is cured for bacon, the head and feet are soused or
pickled, and the trimmings of fat and lean are chopped, highly seasoned,
and used for sausage, or combined with meal and made into scrapple.
_To select fresh pork._ The meat should be firm and of a pale red
colour, the fat hard and white and the skin white and clear. Yellowish
fat, with kernels in it, and soft, flabby flesh are an indication of
inferior pork.