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A Warwickshire Ham

A preserved pork leg cured with saltpetre, malt, sugar, sea salt, onions, then smoked and stored.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Pork and shallot are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,316 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

A Warwickshire Ham

Ingredients

Directions

Cure the pork

  1. Rub the leg of pork with saltpetre, focusing on the hip joint, and let it sit for 24 hours.

  2. Boil the water, malt, sugar or treacle, coarse sea salt, and shallots or onions together for 10 minutes, skimming off any scum.

  3. Pour the hot pickle over the meat, ensuring it is well covered, and let it sit until the grains become sticky.

  4. Drain the grains using a hair sieve and discard them.

  5. Keep the ham covered with the pickle, turning and rubbing it daily for three weeks.

Smoke and store

  1. After three weeks, remove the ham, dry it with cloths, and smoke it for three weeks to a month.

  2. Store the ham in a box surrounded by malt dust and cover it with sand that has been dried in an oven for a week.

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

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

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

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

  3. Malt + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together325 recipes

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

  4. Malt + shallottop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together27 recipes

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

  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

Leg of pork
Provides the meat that is cured, dried and smoked into ham.
Saltpetre
Cures the meat, helping it keep its pink colour and resist spoilage.
Coarse sea salt
Draws out moisture and seasons the meat during the pickle cure.
Sugar or treacle
Adds sweetness and balances the salt in the pickle.
Pale dried malt
Adds a mild sweetness and aroma to the pickle and the surrounding malt dust.

The step that matters

Rub the leg of pork with saltpetre, focusing on the hip joint. The thickest, bone-deep area is slowest to take up cure. Thorough rubbing into the hip joint helps the curing salts reach the centre and prevents spoilage there.

Swap the shallot

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, malt, 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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