Picnic Ham is a staple cut of pork that’s cheap and needs extensive cooking or smoking. It is sometimes retailed as a picnic shoulder or pork shoulder since it is the entire front leg and shoulder. Retailers cut the meat in two, about six pounds, and may call it a Boston butt. The picnic ham is best cooked for many hours, perhaps ten, in a smoker, either with the bone left in or removed.
Picnic Tongue is neither readily available nor popular. However, it is recommended by Wyvern. He advises that Crosse & Blackwell’s is the best-tinned tongue. However, after that, references to picnic tongue disappear.
Crosse & Blackwell Vintage Tin
See Wyvern [Arthur Kenney-Herbert. Culinary Jottings – A Treatise in Thirty Chapters on Reformed Cookery For Anglo-Indian Exiles, Based Upon Modern English and Continental Principles with Thirty Menus for Little Dinners Worked Out in Detail, and An Essay on Our Kitchens in India.” (London,1879)
Wyvern’s Picnic Tongue: First, spread a layer of the stuffing a quarter of an inch thick evenly over the fowl, upon that a layer of your slices of the tongue (spice-pepper freely) upon that a layer of the meat you cut from the fowl (dust of salt) over that a second spread of forcemeat, then your minced liver, &c., and lastly, the block of tongue: fold over this the flattened carcass, disturbing the layers as little as possible, and sew the galantine up securely with fine twine. Envelop this in a clean cloth, and tie it up carefully with cross strings to preserve the oval shape of the galantine. Set this in a deep stew-pan, cover it well with weak stock in which a claret-glass of Madeira has been introduced, and simmer gently for three or four hours. When done, lift it out, drain it, take off the cloth, wrap it in a fresh dry one, and place it on a dish with a heavy weight above it. When quite cold, take out jour galantine, scrape off any fat that may be attached to the skin, glaze it, and set it in the ice-box, finally serving it garnished with broken lumps of aspic jelly.”