Why it works: Ham and pork are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,638 recipes. Both carry 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline, which smells popcorn, roasted. The science ↓
To Cure Meat
Ingredients
Directions
Salt and brine
Rub coarse sea salt on the hams and shoulders and lay them in tubs for 24 hours.
Make a brine strong enough to float an egg or an Irish potato using salt and water.
Before boiling, add 1 ounce of saltpeter and 1 ounce of baking soda for each 200 pounds of pork.
Once the brine boils, remove from heat and let it cool overnight.
Pack and cure
Shake off loose salt from the meat and pack it tightly in a meat barrel.
Pour the cold brine over the meat, ensuring it is fully covered, and weigh it down.
Let it cure for 4 weeks for small hams and 6 weeks for large hams.
Smoke and finish
After curing, wash each piece with warm water.
Hang the meat to smoke until dry and firm.
Plunge each piece into boiling water for about 5 seconds.
Lay the meat skin down on a board in the sun for one day.
Rub each piece thoroughly with powdered borax, ensuring to get into all cracks and on the bone.
Hang the meat in your smokehouse for preservation.
Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.
Explore the science
The flavor team
The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.
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Ham + porktop 13% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together2,638 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Hams and shoulders of hogs
- The main meat that is salted, cured, and smoked into the finished product.
- Coarse sea salt
- Draws moisture out of the meat and seasons it, slowing spoilage during curing.
- Saltpeter
- Helps keep the meat's pink color during curing and inhibits bacterial growth.
- Baking soda
- Raises the brine's alkalinity, which affects how the cure works on the meat.
The step that matters
Letting the meat cure for the full time. Salt must penetrate fully to the centre of the meat before the cure is safe. Stopping early leaves the interior under-cured and vulnerable to spoilage, so the full 4 or 6 week period matters.
“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.
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