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Preserve

Curing Hams

A method for curing hams using salt, molasses, saltpetre, brine, and cold water, involving rubbing, soaking, drying, and smoking.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Molasses and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 34% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,879 recipes. The science ↓

Curing Hams

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the hams

  1. Hang the hams for a week to ten days in a cool place.

  2. Mix salt, molasses, and saltpetre in a bowl.

  3. Rub the mixture well into the hams, especially around the bones.

  4. Repeat the rubbing process until all the mixture is used.

  5. Let the hams sit for two to three days.

Brine and soak

  1. Submerge the hams in brine for three weeks.

  2. Soak the hams in cold water for eight hours.

Dry and smoke

  1. Hang the hams to dry in a cool place for a week or more.

  2. Smoke the hams for three to five days without heating them.

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. Molasses + eggtop 34% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,879 recipes

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

What each ingredient does

Salt
Draws moisture out of the meat and preserves it while it cures.
Saltpetre
Helps preserve the meat and gives the cured ham its characteristic pink colour.
Molasses
Adds sweetness and flavour that balances the saltiness of the cure.

The step that matters

Rubbing the cure into the hams. Salt and saltpetre only preserve the meat where they reach it, so the mixture must be worked well into every part, especially around the bones, where the meat is thickest and least likely to cure through.

“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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