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To Cure Pork Hams

This recipe describes curing pork hams with salt, sugar, saltpetre, and molasses, then smoking them.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and molasses are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,225 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

To Cure Pork Hams

Ingredients

Directions

Cure

  1. Mix the salt, brown sugar, saltpetre, and molasses together.

  2. Rub the mixture well onto the hams, shoulders, and middlings.

  3. Keep the meat in salt for four weeks.

Smoke

  1. After four weeks, hang the meat up and smoke it occasionally for four to five weeks using green hickory wood.

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. Sugar + molassestop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Pork + molassestop 34% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together825 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  3. Pork + sugartop 37% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,579 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

Pork
The main meat that is preserved through curing and smoking.
Coarse sea salt
Draws out moisture and preserves the meat during the long salt cure.
Saltpetre
Helps preserve the meat and gives cured pork its characteristic pink colour.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the harsh flavour of the salt.
Molasses
Adds sweetness, moisture and a deeper flavour to the cure.

The step that matters

Keeping the meat in salt for four weeks. The salt must fully penetrate the meat to preserve it. Too short a cure leaves the centre uncured and prone to spoilage, while the salt draws moisture out of the meat during this time.

“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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