Who Poisoned Your Bacon Sandwich? by Guillaume Coudray

Author:Guillaume Coudray [Coudray, Guillaume]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2021-06-15T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 9

THE NITROSO SURPRISE

In the very first patent for sodium nitrite curing in 1917, the inventor, the American George Doran, explains that this substance shortens each stage of the production process.1 That is why methods employing nitrite were designated as ‘quick cure’ or ‘accelerated cure’, and why many additives based on nitrite had names that evoked speed. Heller & Co. offered a mixture of salt and nitrite under the label ‘SchnellSalz’ (Fast Salt) and another called ‘Quick-Action Pickle’ (‘QA’) with the claim: ‘Quick action is assured when using this product’.2 Griffith Laboratories used to sell their nitrited curing salt ‘Prague Salt’ by presenting it as ‘the safe, fast cure’ with the accompanying slogan: ‘there is a shorter road to perfect curing’.3 Even today, many manufacturers of nitrited curing salt still emphasize speed. One company sells a product known as ‘Tender-Quick’. Other brands include ‘Insta-Cure’, ‘Speed Cure’, ‘Kwikcurit’, and ‘Holly Quick’. The distributor butcher-packer.com suggests that, by using its nitrited curing salt, ‘your sausage will be ready to cook or smoke as soon as you have it stuffed (there is no need to wait)’.4 And when he was lobbying the British authorities to authorize the use of nitrite in the 1930s, the director of the British Food Manufacturers’ Research Association explained: ‘We have now carried out a lengthy series of experiments on the curing of bacon and hams using nitrite to speed up the cure. We have been able to reduce the time of curing considerably in each case, in fact we have cured hams sufficiently well for sale as cooked hams in from two to three days.’5

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