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A Warwickshire Ham

A cured and smoked ham prepared with saltpetre, malt, sugar, sea salt, and onions, then stored with malt dust.

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.

  2. Let the rubbed leg of pork sit for 24 hours.

  3. Boil the water, malt, sugar, coarse sea salt, and shallots or onions together for 10 minutes. Skim off any scum from the boiling mixture.

  4. Pour the hot pickle over the meat.

  5. Let the pickle sit until the grains become sticky.

  6. Drain the grains using a fine sieve.

  7. Keep the ham covered with the pickle.

  8. Turn and rub the ham daily for 3 weeks.

  9. Remove the ham after 3 weeks.

  10. Dry the ham with cloths.

Smoke and store

  1. Smoke the ham for 3 weeks to 1 month.

  2. Store the ham in a box surrounded by malt dust.

  3. Cover the ham 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
Forms the meat that is cured, firming and preserving it over the long curing period.
Saltpetre
Helps preserve the meat and gives cured ham its characteristic pink colour.
Coarse sea salt
Draws moisture out of the meat and seasons it during the pickle cure.
Sugar or treacle
Adds sweetness and balances the saltiness of the pickle.
Pale dried malt
Adds a mellow sweetness and flavour to the pickle.

The step that matters

Keep the ham covered with the pickle. If any part of the meat is exposed to air, it can spoil or cure unevenly. Keeping the ham fully submerged during the curing period helps the salt and cure penetrate evenly and protects the meat.

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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