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Welsh Mutton Hams

A preserved smoked ham made from Welsh mutton legs, cured with treacle, spices, vinegar, and smoked over oak, peat, beech, and turf.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Thyme and marjoram match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,225 recipes. Both carry terpineol, which smells pine, woody. The science ↓

Welsh Mutton Hams

Ingredients

Directions

Cure

  1. Rub the mutton legs with hot treacle.

  2. Place the legs in a deep pan overnight.

  3. Make a pickle with thyme, marjoram, bay leaves, laurel leaves, saltpetre, black pepper, coarse sea salt, and water boiled and skimmed for an hour.

  4. Once the pickle is cold, pour it over the meat.

  5. Rub the meat daily with the pickle.

  6. Turn the meat for three weeks.

  7. After three weeks, remove the meat from the pickle.

Dry and smoke

  1. Rub the meat with strong vinegar for one hour.

  2. Wipe the meat dry.

  3. Hang the meat in a draft until fully dry.

  4. Coat the meat with bran or oatmeal.

  5. Smoke the meat with a mixture of oak sawdust, peat, beech, and turf for three weeks or more.

  6. Store the hams in malt cooms with pulverized charcoal.

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. Thyme + marjoramtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: terpineol (pine, woody).

  2. Thyme + laureltop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,444 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Marjoram + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,609 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Thyme + peppertop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  5. Marjoram + laureltop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together423 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

What each ingredient does

Mutton legs
Forms the meat that is cured, dried and smoked into the ham.
Treacle
Adds sweetness and flavour, and its sugars help the surface darken.
Coarse sea salt
Draws out moisture and preserves the meat during curing.
Strong vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens flavour and helps the surface dry.
Oak sawdust
Gives a smoky aroma and helps flavour the surface during smoking.

The step that matters

Let the pickle cool before pouring it over the meat. Hot pickle would start to cook the surface of the raw meat and cure it unevenly. Cooling it first lets the salt and aromatics penetrate gently and evenly over the three weeks of curing.

Swap the marjoram

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, thyme, laurel, pepper, vinegar):

  1. Marjoramthe original
  2. Rosemaryfits about as well
  3. Parsleyfits less well
  4. Allspicefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, thyme, laurel, pepper, 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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