Name: Famous Recipe for Curing Hams
Ingredients: 3½ pounds fine salt; 1 pound saltpetre; 2 pounds brown sugar; Brine (strong enough to float an egg); Green hickory or walnut wood for smoking

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 ↓

Famous Recipe for Curing Hams

Ingredients

3½ pounds fine salt
1 pound saltpetre
2 pounds brown sugar
Brine (strong enough to float an egg)
Green hickory or walnut wood for smoking

Directions

Mix the salt, saltpetre, and brown sugar thoroughly.
Rub the mixture on both sides of each ham.
Pack the hams in a tight box and place in a cool area for about three weeks.
After three weeks, place the hams in a pickling tub and cover with brine.
Let the hams remain in the brine for about three weeks.
Remove the hams, rub them with fresh salt, and hang in a well-ventilated area to dry for a few days.
Transfer the hams to a smokehouse and smoke with green hickory or walnut wood until they turn a bright mahogany color.
Sew each ham in canvas, whitewash the coverings, and hang to dry.
Whitewash the hams again and pack them in hogsheads with hickory ashes until needed.

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.

Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together122,807 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Egg + walnuttop 23% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together6,037 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Sugar + walnuttop 26% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together7,147 recipes

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