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Cured Mutton Ilams

Curing mutton hams with salt, sugar, spices, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Allspice and pepper 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 ↓

Cured Mutton Ilams

Ingredients

Directions

Make the cure

  1. In a pot, combine the coarse sea salt, common salt, saltpetre, brown sugar, bruised allspice, whole black pepper, and water.

  2. Boil the mixture for a few minutes.

Cure the hams

  1. Rub the hot mixture onto the mutton hams.

  2. Repeat the rubbing process daily for three weeks.

  3. After three weeks, the hams will be ready to hang.

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. Allspice + peppertop 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

Saltpetre
Helps cure the meat and keeps its colour pink during long curing.
Coarse sea salt
Draws moisture out of the meat and preserves it through the cure.
Brown sugar
Balances the salt and adds mild sweetness to the cured meat.

The step that matters

Daily rubbing for three weeks. The cure must reach the centre of thick hams by slow diffusion of salt and nitrate. Skipping rubs leaves uneven curing and spoilage risk, so each day's rub matters.

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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