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German Meat Curing Methods

Curing meat with coarse sea salt, saltpeter, optional spices, then smoking or drying.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

German Meat Curing Methods

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cure

  1. Mix 1 part saltpeter with 32 parts coarse sea salt and sprinkle with powdered clay.

  2. Rub the mixture into the meat.

Cure the hams

  1. Place the meat in the smokehouse.

  2. Cure hams in salt for 18 to 28 days.

  3. Scrape off scum from the hams.

  4. Dip the hams in boiling water.

Cure the bacon

  1. Rub bacon in much salt.

  2. Place bacon in a pickling barrel with layers of salt and sugar and allow brine to form.

  3. Pour brine over the bacon daily for 14 to 20 days.

Dry, smoke and hang

  1. After curing, dry the meat.

  2. Smoke the meat.

  3. Hang the meat in an airy place.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

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.

  1. Clove + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Ginger + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,380 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Ginger + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Sage + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together731 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Caraway + cinnamontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together188 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Coarse sea salt
Draws out moisture and preserves the meat during curing.
Saltpeter
Helps preserve the meat and gives cured meat its pink color.
Loaf sugar
Adds mild sweetness and balances the sharpness of the salt.

The step that matters

Mix 1 part saltpeter with 32 parts coarse sea salt. Saltpeter is used in very small amounts, so it must be mixed evenly into the salt. Uneven mixing leaves spots with too little preservative or too much, which affects safety and color.

Swap the caraway

The recipe marks caraway as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, sage, ginger, clove, cinnamon):

  1. Allspicefits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Cardamomfits better
  4. Carawaythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, sage, ginger, clove, cinnamon. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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