Name: Formulas for Minced Ham
Ingredients: 100 pounds of pork cuttings; 20 pounds of hog cheek meat; 30 pounds of beef cheek meat; 6 pounds of coarse sea salt; 6 ounces of white pepper; ½ pound of sugar; 1 pound of sausage flour; Water (as needed); Saltpetre (optional, for preservation)

Why it works: Pork and beef match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,690 recipes. Both carry 12-methyltridecanal, which smells tallowy, beefy. The science ↓

Formulas for Minced Ham

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 135°F (57°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the mixture

Chop the pork cuttings, hog cheek meat, and beef cheek meat together until fine.
Add the coarse sea salt, white pepper, sugar, and sausage flour, and continue chopping until well mixed.
Add water to achieve the desired consistency.

Stuff and smoke

Stuff the mixture into beef bladders.
Smoke for 2½ hours, starting at 135°F (57°C) and finishing with saltpetre if used.

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.

Pork + beeftop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together5,690 recipes

Shared aroma: 12-methyltridecanal (tallowy, beefy).
Pork + meattop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,208 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).
Meat + beeftop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,533 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).
Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together92,116 recipes

Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).
Beef + flourtop 25% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together10,677 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Beef and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 10,677 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

Pork cuttings: Supplies most of the meat and fat that give the mixture its body and richness.
Beef cheek meat: Adds meaty bulk and savoury flavour to the mixture.
Hog cheek meat: Adds meaty bulk and savoury flavour to the mixture.
Sausage flour: Absorbs added water and binds the chopped meat so the mixture holds together.

The step that matters

Adding water. Water is added gradually until the mixture reaches the target consistency. Too much makes it loose and hard to bind, because the flour and meat proteins can only hold a limited amount of liquid.

Swap the white pepper

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

Jalapenofits better
Nutmegfits better
Cinnamonfits better
White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, meat, beef, sugar, 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.

Roast Beef211 recipes

Beef Loaf175 recipes

Pork Cake107 recipes

Corned Beef87 recipes

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Formulas for Minced Ham