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Beef Hams

A smoked beef ham made by curing a beef leg with salt, sugar, saltpetre, and bay salt, then smoking and serving with eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Beef and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 37% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,435 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Beef Hams

Ingredients

Directions

Cure

  1. Cut the leg of a small ox like a ham.

  2. Rub the salt, sugar, saltpetre, and bay salt into the meat.

  3. Turn and baste the meat every day for a month in the pickle.

Smoke and serve

  1. After a month, take it out, roll it in bran, and smoke it.

  2. Hang it in a dry place and cut pieces off to boil or broil with poached eggs.

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. Beef + sugartop 37% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,435 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

Beef leg
Forms the main body of the ham, which the cure penetrates and firms.
Saltpetre
Preserves the meat and gives the cured ham its characteristic pink color.
Brown sugar
Balances the saltiness and adds mild sweetness to the cure.
Coarse sea salt
Draws moisture out of the meat and seasons it during the pickling.

The step that matters

Turn and baste the meat every day for a month in the pickle. The cure must reach evenly through the thick muscle. Regular turning keeps every surface in contact with the brine, so the salt and curing agents penetrate uniformly rather than leaving spoiled or unevenly cured areas.

“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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