Skip to main content
Main

Ham, Cured

This recipe describes a method for curing ham using salt, pepper, saltpetre, and sugar over four weeks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Pepper and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 32% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,401 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Ham, Cured

Ingredients

Directions

Cure the ham

  1. Mix the salt, coarse sea salt, black pepper, saltpetre, and coarse sugar together.

  2. Rub the mixture thoroughly over the ham.

Rest and finish

  1. Let the ham sit for four weeks, turning it every other day and basting it with the brine.

  2. After four weeks, drain the ham and cover it with bran.

  3. Decide whether to smoke or hang the ham for preservation.

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. Pepper + sugartop 32% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19,401 recipes

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

Pepper and sugar 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

Salt
Draws moisture out of the meat and helps preserve it during curing.
Coarse sugar
Balances the saltiness and adds a mild sweetness to the cured flavour.
Saltpetre
Helps preserve the meat's pink colour and inhibits spoilage bacteria during curing.
Black pepper
Adds aroma and a mild heat to the cured surface.

The step that matters

Rubbing the cure thoroughly over the ham. Salt and saltpetre only preserve the meat where they make contact, so uneven coverage leaves spots that can spoil. Even coverage lets the salt draw moisture out and penetrate the meat evenly over the four weeks.

“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.

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesYorkshire PuddingYorkshire Pudding264 recipes