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Westmoreland Hams

A large pork leg cured with saltpetre, beer, salt, sugar, and smoked, then coated with quick‑lime.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Beer and malt work together. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 55 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Westmoreland Hams

Ingredients

Directions

Cure

  1. Rub the pork leg all over with saltpetre, then let it sit for 14 hours.

  2. Boil the porter or beer with coarse salt and sugar, and skim the boiling mixture well.

  3. Pour the hot pickle over the meat. Let the meat sit for 1 month, rubbing and turning it every other day.

  4. Remove the meat after a month and rub it dry.

Coat and smoke

  1. Roll the meat in malt dust or oatmeal until it adheres.

  2. Smoke the ham for 3 weeks.

Finish and hang

  1. Coat the ham with a paste of quick-lime and hot water, then let it sit for 1 week.

  2. Hang the ham in a dry, cool room.

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. Beer + malttop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together55 recipes

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

  2. Pork + beertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together316 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  3. Beer + limetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together134 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Pork + malttop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together45 recipes

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

  5. Sugar + malttop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together325 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

Pork leg
Provides the meat that is cured, smoked and aged into ham.
Saltpetre
Helps preserve the meat and gives cured ham its characteristic colour.
Coarse salt
Draws out moisture and seasons the meat while helping preserve it.
Coarse sugar
Balances the saltiness and adds mild sweetness to the cure.
Porter or beer
Carries the salt and sugar into the pickle and adds malty flavour.

The step that matters

Skimming the boiling pickle. Skimming removes proteins and impurities that rise as foam, leaving a cleaner pickle that is less likely to spoil or taint the meat during the long cure.

Swap the lime

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

  1. Applefits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Bananafits better
  4. Limethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, beer, sugar, malt. 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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