Skip to main content
Main

Westphalia Bacon

A cured and smoked pork side prepared with salt, sugar, saltpetre, bay leaves, and river water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Pork and ham are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,638 recipes. Both carry 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline, which smells popcorn, roasted. The science ↓

Westphalia Bacon

Ingredients

Directions

Salt the pork

  1. Lay the pork in a salting trough with common salt for 12 to 14 hours.

  2. Remove the pork and wipe it dry.

  3. Wash out the trough and place the meat back in it.

Make and apply the brine

  1. Boil 1 gallon of river water with 2 lbs of coarse sea salt, 2 lbs of common salt, 2 oz of saltpetre, 2 lbs of coarse sugar, and 1 handful of chopped bay leaves for 10 minutes.

  2. Skim the mixture well and let it cool.

  3. Pour the cooled mixture over the pork.

Cure, dry and smoke

  1. Rub the mixture into the pork twice a day, turning it often for 14 days.

  2. Remove the pork from the brine and wipe it dry with cloths.

  3. Hang the pork in the air for 24 hours.

  4. Smoke it for at least 3 weeks.

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 + hamtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,638 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  2. Ham + sugartop 33% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,084 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Pork + sugartop 37% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,579 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Common salt
Draws out moisture and seasons the meat, helping preserve it.
Coarse sea salt
Seasons the brine and draws moisture from the pork during curing.
Saltpetre
Acts as a curing agent that helps preserve the meat and gives it a pink colour.
Coarse sugar
Balances the saltiness and adds sweetness that supports browning during smoking.
Bay leaves
Adds a subtle herbal aroma to the brine.

The step that matters

Rub the mixture into the pork twice a day, turning it often for 14 days.. Brine penetrates slowly and unevenly, so regular rubbing and turning keeps the cure distributed. Missed turning can leave thick or underseasoned areas that cure poorly and spoil.

“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.

You might also like

Pork CakePork Cake107 recipesRoast PorkRoast Pork82 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipes