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Dry Sugar-Cured New England Ham

A ham made from lean pork cuttings, potato flour, and bungs, smoked and then cooked in water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Pork and potato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,668 recipes. Both carry sotolon, which smells curry, maple. The science ↓

Dry Sugar-Cured New England Ham

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 160°F in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Combine lean pork cuttings and potato flour.

  2. Stuff the mixture into bungs and tie with twine.

Smoke and cook

  1. Smoke the ham for 2.5 hours at 160°F to 165°F.

  2. Cook the ham in water starting at 200°F and finishing at 160°F for 3 hours.

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. Pork + potatotop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,668 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

  2. Potato + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,355 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Pork + flourtop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together11,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Pork and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 11,187 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Lean pork cuttings
Provide the meat that forms the body and flavor of the ham.
Potato flour
Binds the meat and absorbs moisture, helping the ham hold together and stay juicy.

Swap the potato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pork, flour):

  1. Potatothe original
  2. Turnipfits about as well
  3. Shallotfits about as well
  4. Okrafits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, flour. 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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