The smokehouse

It’s a Saturday morning and the aroma of bacon in the frying pan drifts through the house. Sipping on a coffee, I begin to think of…well, how foods are smoke-cured. I glance through the kitchen window toward the small stone building that sits across the road on a high bank of Slab Creek.

“Stone smokehouses are not that common… generally the early ones were built of wood. I think they felt that the wood held less moisture and was better for the quality of the meat,” Ernie Margetson tells me. Ernie is one who can always be counted on to share knowledge of the built heritage of Prince Edward County.

I follow him as he ducks his six-foot-plus frame under the head-beam of the entrance into neighbour Geoff Heinricks’s smokehouse.

“This one is made of local limestone,” Ernie mentions. He touches a seam between the stones. “The mortar is original, a lime-based mortar made by a local stonemason.” From inside the enclosure we listen to the rattle of the creek as it rounds a bend just beyond. “Normally the slaughtering time would be late fall,” Ernie explains. “First they would salt the meat…maybe soak it in brine,” he says. “The salt draws the moisture out of the meat.”

Ernie crouches to the earth floor and reaches for something in the cold light of the doorway. “This is a hand-formed brick,” he tells me, pointing out the mold marks. “See how small it is? Its rough cast…these are all old bricks from a local clay source,” he says.

“You build a small fire on the floor…to create a smoke bath, like a smudge, from green hardwoods…hickory, alder, maple or maybe fruitwoods like apple, cherry or plum to add flavour. Sometimes even mix in corn cobs that would smoulder all day. The smoke needs to be contained in the building…it will slowly release through the roof and leak out of the soffits,” Ernie tells me. “Smoke the meat for 2-3 weeks and leave it hanging in here. They would cut pieces off and re-smoke it to seal it again, providing meat all winter long. It’s the creosote in the smoke that seals the meat and stops the moulding.”

Hold on a minute! Creosote? I think of the black grungy stuff they put on railway ties or the coating that sticks to the liner of my stove pipe. I’m shaken with the idea of having to abandon my favourites: smoked beef and pork ribs and smoke-cured salmon and malt whisky and Gruyere cheese and kippers and ham and…all of it smoked! It’s only later when I do the homework that I’m relieved to know that, like cholesterol, there is good and bad creosote, depending on its source.

The process of curing with smoke goes back to the cavemen but it turns out that—here’s where you gotta love those early Greeks!—they gave the name creosote (two words combining to mean ‘flesh preserver’) to that tarry smoke compound responsible for the preservation and flavour of meat. I read how there is an antiseptic contained in the wood smoke, creating antioxidants that slow bacterial growth. Something about sugar molecules in hardwoods that caramelize when burnt, preserving the food while adding those warm colours and flowery and fruity aromas….spicy, pungent, sweet, vanilla or clove-like scents. Now my mind is onto pastrami, prosciutto, sausage, paprika…brisket! We secure the door to Geoff’s smokehouse as we’re leaving.

Further upstream where Slab Creek runs under Station Road is a white picket fence that defines the elegant ‘old Young house’, as it is sometimes called. Present owners Stan and Chris McMullin take pride in the stone smokehouse ‘out back’ of their place. “It was filled with wood when we came and we continue to use it for firewood storage,” Chris comments when we arrive. She points to the roof. “I was up there taking off the old shingles the first summer we were here,” she tells us. “It was in pretty bad shape alright,” Stan adds. “We redid it with hand-split cedar shakes.”

We note the details: the small six-pane window; the aged keyed lock in the door. “I’m always amazed at how seemingly perfectly aligned the building is,” Chris comments, referring to the 10’x 12’ dimensions. Ernie doesn’t need a ladder to remove the remnants of a mouse nest hidden in a gap between stones near the peak. “Looks like a vent hole left to release the smoke and draw the fire during the process,” he tells us.

Before we leave, we circle the building, admiring its setting, complete with an original three-seater outhouse behind it in which bees have built a hive. The bees are slow but active in the noonday January sun. Ernie beckons to the smokehouse. “I’m aware of at least a dozen of these around and a few that have been torn down…the stone used for chimneys and things like that,” Ernie recounts. “Not everyone sees the beauty of these little buildings.”

The wind chimes suspended on the veranda of the McMullin place sing to the breeze that follows the south slope of a nearby resting grape patch. By late March the tiny snow drop flowers will show along the fence that chases the road. The afternoon lands with grace onto the shadows of Slab Creek. And my thoughts are onto the idea of dinner and smoked trout.