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Curing Hams

A method for preserving hams by salting, molasses, saltpetre, brine, smoking, and drying.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Molasses and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 34% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,879 recipes. The science ↓

Curing Hams

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cure

  1. Hang the hams for a week to ten days in a cool, dry place.

  2. Mix the salt, molasses, and saltpetre in a bowl.

  3. Heat the mixture and rub it well into the hams, focusing on the bones and recesses.

  4. Repeat the rubbing process until all the mixture is used.

  5. Let the hams sit for two to three days.

Brine and soak

  1. Submerge the hams in brine for three weeks.

  2. Soak the hams in cold water for eight hours.

Dry, smoke and store

  1. Hang the hams to dry in a convenient place for a week or more.

  2. Smoke the hams for three to five days, ensuring they do not heat up.

  3. Use corn-cobs or apple-tree wood for smoking.

  4. Tie the hams in bags for summer 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. Molasses + eggtop 34% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,879 recipes

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

What each ingredient does

Salt
Draws moisture out of the meat and preserves it, while seasoning it throughout.
Molasses
Adds sweetness and a rounded flavor that balances the salt.
Saltpetre
Acts as a curing agent that preserves the meat and helps give cured hams their color.

The step that matters

Smoke without heating the hams. Cold smoking flavors and dries the meat without cooking it. If the hams warm up, the cure is no longer a raw, dry-cured process and the meat can spoil or cook unevenly.

“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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