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Leg of Mutton Hams

A mutton leg preserved by salting, pickling, smoking, and burying in soil.

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 leg of mutton thoroughly with coarse sugar for 20 to 30 minutes.

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

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

  4. Submerge the mutton in the pickle.

  5. Let it sit for 3 weeks without wiping it.

Smoke and hang

  1. After 3 weeks, smoke the mutton, turning it frequently for 2 weeks.

  2. Once cold, place it in a calico bag and hang it in the kitchen until needed.

Bury and cook

  1. Before cooking, bury it 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

Coarse sea salt
Draws out moisture and seasons the meat during the long pickle cure.
Common salt
Adds salinity to the pickle, helping preserve and season the meat.
Saltpetre
Helps preserve the meat and gives it a characteristic cured colour.
Coarse sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the saltiness of the cure.
Juniper berries
Contributes a resinous, aromatic flavour to the pickle.

The step that matters

Turning during the smoke. Turning the leg often during the two-week smoke keeps the surface evenly exposed to smoke and heat, so it dries and colours uniformly rather than scorching or drying unevenly.

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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