Why it works: Pepper and tea work together. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 260 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓
Keeping Meats
Ingredients
Directions
Sprinkle a little coarse sea salt on the pieces of meat.
Cover the meat well with pure pulverized borax.
Ensure borax is applied in every crevice to prevent flies.
If desired, immerse the joints in strong pepper tea before applying borax.
Leave the hams and shoulders in salt for as long as desired.
After salting, wash and dry the meat carefully.
Store the treated meat hanging in a smokehouse during summer.
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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Pepper + teatop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together260 recipes
Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
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