Smokehouse

A smokehouse (North American) or smokery (British) is a building where meat or fish is cured with smoke. The finished product might be stored in the building, sometimes for a year or more. Even when smoke is not used, such a building—typically a subsidiary building—is sometimes referred to as a "smoke house." When smoke is not used, the term "meat house" is common. As a preserved ham represents a big financial investment, smokehouses in the Carolinas and Virginia can frequently be identified by their framing, so closely spaced as to prevent forcible entry and theft. The lower interior walls of both meat houses and smoke houses are characterized by the extremely furring of the wood, caused by the salt. The upper areas of smokehouses are also black with the smoke. A meat house has a solid wood floor; a smokehouse will have a brick pit in the center of the dirt floor, or sometimes a broken/cast-off cast iron pot, for the fire. Jefferson's smokehouse at Monticello is an integral part of the brick outbuildings. It has a conventional brick fireplace built into an exterior wall; its flue discharges into the smokehouse.