Making Faux Fatback Meat Prison Museum Exhibit at the Fauquier History Museum at the Old Jail, c. 1823-1860

The second part of my “prison” faux food assignment at the Fauquier History Museum at the Old Jail, was to make some faux fatback for the prison meals of “bread and meat”.

I don’t know much about fatback so I had to research it a bit. Apparently it is made mostly the fat from the back of the pig. To me, It looks like bacon but is almost pure white fat. The meat is cured in a process using salt and sugar. The curing apparently removes the water from the meat. From my understanding, after curing it, the fatback meat can then be eaten but I’ve never tasted it.

Fatback is used in southern cooking because it gives a lot of flavor to an average meal. Early pioneers used fatback because it flavored their meals, was portable, and inexpensive to purchase.

In the below photograph, you will notice the four rectangular slices which were made from one package of white Crayola Model Magic. The faux fatback pieces were placed on wax paper to dry. The wax paper prevents the faux food from sticking to a surface.

I’m thinking the faux fatback pieces might be dry in two to three weeks’ time.

To judge the size of the serving, I placed the fatback and a chunk of bread on a bread dish.

I finished the faux fatback pieces by mixing a little bit of pink and brown acrylic paint together. It’s helpful to have several colors of different paints so that you can accurately match colors. I made thin strips of the mixed colors to simulate the meat strips in bacon.

The only thing left is to allow the paint to thoroughly dry and my work for the new prison display is complete.

I’ll come back and give my Readers an update on the project after I donate it. As always, happy crafting.

A Special Thank You to Sean Redmiles for the museum tour and for allowing me to take photographs to post on my blog.