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Westphalia Hams Eclipsed

A whole pork leg dry-cured with salts and saltpetre, pickled in vinegar, and smoked.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Vinegar and shallot are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,374 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Westphalia Hams Eclipsed

Ingredients

Directions

Cure

  1. Mix saltpetre, sugar, common salt, and coarse sea salt in a bowl.

  2. Rub the mixture all over the pork leg once a day for four days.

  3. Bring the pickling vinegar and sliced shallot to a boil, then let the vinegar cool.

  4. Add the cooled vinegar to the meat and turn it daily for a month.

  5. After a month, remove the meat from the pickle.

Dry and smoke

  1. Hang the meat to drip for 24 hours.

  2. Turn the ham end for end at least twice a week.

  3. Smoke the ham for one month using oak lops, fern, beech chips, and turfs.

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. Vinegar + shallottop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,374 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Sugar + vinegartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  3. Pork + shallottop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Pork + vinegartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

  5. Sugar + shallottop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together817 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

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

What each ingredient does

Pork leg
Forms the ham itself; its dense muscle takes up cure and smoke and becomes firm when dried.
Saltpetre
Helps preserve the meat and gives the cured ham its characteristic pink colour.
Common salt
Draws out moisture and seasons the meat, slowing spoilage during the long cure.
Coarse sugar
Balances the salt with mild sweetness and helps the flavour develop during curing.
Pickling vinegar
Adds acidity to the pickle, contributing tang and further slowing bacterial growth.

The step that matters

Turning the ham in the pickle and during smoking. Regular turning keeps the cure and smoke evenly distributed, so the salt and smoke penetrate all areas of the thick leg rather than leaving uneven, underseasoned or spoiled patches.

Swap the shallot

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

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Potatofits better
  4. Shallotthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, sugar, vinegar. 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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