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Westphalia Hams

Cured and smoked hams shaped like Westphalia, seasoned with saltpetre, sea salt, sugar, and bay leaves.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Ham and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 33% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,084 recipes. Both carry phenylacetaldehyde, which smells hawthorne, honey. The science ↓

Westphalia Hams

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Shape the hams long and narrow, pointed at the end, and press them under a board to flatten.

  2. Four days after killing, rub the hams all over with coarse sea salt, focusing on the hip-bone and knuckle joints.

  3. After a day and night, brush off the salt and dry the hams with a coarse cloth.

Cure

  1. Rub 1 oz of saltpetre into each ham and let it sit for 24 hours.

  2. Heat ½ lb of coarse sea salt in a pan without melting it, then rub it all over the hams.

  3. Let the hams sit until a brine forms, turning and basting them daily with the brine for three weeks.

  4. After three weeks, remove the hams from the brine and immerse them in cold spring water for 24 hours.

Finish and smoke

  1. Let them drip, wipe them with a cloth, and rub coagulated hog's blood all over.

  2. Smoke the hams for one week, ensuring they are well covered.

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

What each ingredient does

Hams
The main meat, which the salt and saltpetre cure and the smoke flavours.
Saltpetre
Helps the cure set and gives the cured meat its characteristic pink colour.
Coarse sea salt
Draws moisture out of the meat and dissolves into the brine that preserves it.

The step that matters

Turning and basting the hams in brine for three weeks. Salt draws water out of the meat and dissolves into the brine, which then penetrates inward. Turning and basting daily keeps every surface in contact with the brine so the cure reaches evenly through the ham.

“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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