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Leg of Mutton Hams

A preserved leg of mutton pickled in salt, sugar, spices, then smoked and cured.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Mutton and thyme work together. They rank in the top 27% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 586 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-ol, which smells mushroom, earthy. The science ↓

Leg of Mutton Hams

Ingredients

Directions

Cure

  1. Rub the mutton leg thoroughly with coarse sugar for 20 to 30 minutes.

  2. Let it sit for 12 hours, turning it three times.

  3. Simmer the coarse sea salt, common salt, saltpetre, juniper berries, thyme, bay leaves, and soft water together for 1 hour.

  4. Let the mixture cool, then submerge the mutton in the pickle for 3 weeks without wiping it.

Smoke and hang

  1. Smoke the mutton for 2 weeks, turning it frequently.

  2. When cold, place it in a calico bag and hang it in the kitchen until ready to use.

Prepare and cook

  1. Before cooking, bury the bag in dry garden soil for about 20 hours.

  2. When boiling, add plenty of bay leaves, thyme, and marjoram to the pot.

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. Mutton + thymetop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together586 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  2. Mutton + sugartop 34% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together726 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Sugar + thymetop 37% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,682 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

Mutton leg
Forms the main meat that the cure, smoke and long hanging transform.
Coarse sea salt
Draws moisture out of the meat and preserves it through the long pickle.
Common salt
Adds salinity to the pickle, helping preserve and season the meat.
Saltpetre
Helps the meat keep its red colour and inhibits spoilage during curing.
Coarse sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the saltiness of the cure.
Juniper berries
Contribute a resinous aroma to the pickle and the finished meat.

The step that matters

Submerging the mutton in the pickle. The leg must stay fully under the brine for the whole three weeks; any exposed part can spoil or cure unevenly, since salt only penetrates meat it touches.

Swap the thyme

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Gingerfits better
  3. Pepperfits better
  4. Thymethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, sugar. 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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