Dry-cured-and-smoked Virginia country ham, sliced thin and served center-cut on Sally Bell's box-lunch plates and inside The Roosevelt's biscuits. Smithfield-style is the canonical version.
Captain Mallory Todd of Smithfield, Virginia made the first known commercial export of cured Smithfield ham in 1779. The Virginia General Assembly later codified the Smithfield ham name in a 1926 statute tied to peanut-fed hogs from the Virginia and North Carolina peanut belt (the peanut-belt requirement was removed in 1966; the geographic-processing requirement remains). The dry-cure, salt-rub and slow-smoke method became a Virginia trade. Smithfield is now a Smithfield Foods brand, but small smokehouses across the region (Edwards, Surryano, Gwaltney) continue the country-cured tradition.
