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Famoqs Recipe for Curing Hams

This recipe describes a method for curing hams using salt, saltpetre, brown sugar, brine, and smoking.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 21% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 122,807 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Famoqs Recipe for Curing Hams

Ingredients

Directions

Cure

  1. Mix the salt, saltpetre, and brown sugar thoroughly.

  2. Rub the mixture on both sides of each ham.

  3. Pack the hams in a tight box and place in a cool area for three weeks.

  4. Transfer the hams to a pickling tub and cover with brine for three weeks.

Dry and smoke

  1. Remove the hams, rub with fresh salt, and hang in a well-ventilated area to dry for a few days.

  2. Hang the hams in a smokehouse and smoke with green hickory or walnut wood until they turn a bright mahogany color.

Wrap and store

  1. Sew each ham in canvas, whitewash the coverings, and hang to dry.

  2. Whitewash the hams again and pack them in hogsheads with hickory ashes for storage.

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 + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

  2. Egg + walnuttop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,037 recipes

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

  3. Sugar + walnuttop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,147 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

Fine salt
Draws moisture out of the meat and preserves it by limiting bacterial growth.
Saltpetre
Helps keep the meat's pink color and adds to the cured flavor and preservation.
Brown sugar
Balances the salt with sweetness and adds mild molasses flavor to the cure.

The step that matters

Curing period in the cool box. Salt and saltpetre must penetrate evenly through the whole ham over the long rest. Too little time or too warm a spot lets the centre spoil before the cure has set, so keep the hams cool and fully covered.

Swap the walnut

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

  1. Pecansfits better
  2. Almondfits better
  3. Chestnutfits about as well
  4. Walnutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, egg. 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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