Why it works: Mutton and sugar work together. They rank in the top 34% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 726 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓
Mutton Ham
Ingredients
Directions
Cure
Rub the mutton with salt and sugar thoroughly.
Repeat this process daily for 10 days, turning the meat each day.
After 10 days, place the mutton in a pickle for another 10 days.
Cook and dry
To cook, boil the mutton with or without spices.
For drying, rub with dried spices and sugar, then hang covered with canvas.
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.
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Mutton + sugartop 34% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together726 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Coarse sea salt
- Draws moisture out of the meat and seasons it, helping preserve it during the cure.
- Sugar
- Balances the salt's sharpness and adds sweetness to the cured meat's flavour.
The step that matters
Turning the meat daily during the salt rub. Salt penetrates unevenly and draws out moisture, so turning the mutton each day lets the cure reach all surfaces evenly. Skipping turns can leave some areas under-salted and others overly firm or dry.
“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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