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To Cure Hams, Etc., in Brine

This recipe describes curing hams in a salt, sugar, spice, and saltpeter brine for several weeks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,395 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

To Cure Hams, Etc., in Brine

Ingredients

Directions

Dry cure

  1. Rub the hams with the salt, brown sugar, cayenne pepper, allspice, and saltpeter.

  2. Place the hams skin side down in a barrel.

  3. Let them sit for one week.

Brine and cure

  1. Make a pickle with water and enough salt to float an egg, then add the sugar.

  2. Pour the pickle over the hams until fully covered.

  3. Let them cure for four weeks.

Dry and smoke

  1. Remove the hams and hang them to dry for at least one week before smoking.

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. Pepper + allspicetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,395 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Sugar + allspicetop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,938 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

  3. Sugar + peppertop 32% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19,401 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Sugar and pepper barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 19,401 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Salt
Draws out moisture and preserves the meat while it cures.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the salt in the cure.
Saltpeter
Helps preserve the meat's pink colour during long curing.

The step that matters

Pouring the pickle over the hams until fully covered. Any part of the ham left above the brine can spoil or cure unevenly, because salt only penetrates meat it is in contact with.

Swap the allspice

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, pepper):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Cardamomfits about as well
  3. Allspicethe original
  4. Gingerfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, pepper. 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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