Why it works: Mutton and sugar work together. They rank in the top 34% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 726 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓
Mutton Ham
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the cure
Cut the leg of mutton into the shape of a ham.
In a mortar, combine the coarse sea salt, saltpetre, and coarse brown sugar. Heat the mixture in a stewpan.
Cure
Rub the heated mixture thoroughly into the meat. Turn the ham every morning for four days and rub the pickle into the ham each time.
On the fifth day, add the common salt. Turn the ham in the brine for twelve more days.
Dry and smoke
Drain and wipe the ham dry. Rub the ham with dry salt.
Hang the ham in wood smoke for one week to dry.
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.
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Mutton + sugartop 34% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together726 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
- Leg of mutton
- Is the meat that is cured and smoked, becoming the ham.
- Saltpetre
- Helps preserve the meat and gives it its characteristic cured colour.
- Coarse sea salt
- Draws moisture out of the meat and seasons it during the initial cure.
- Coarse brown sugar
- Adds sweetness and balances the saltiness of the cure.
- Common salt
- Continues the curing by penetrating the meat in the brine and preserving it.
The step that matters
Turning and rubbing the ham daily during the first four days. Salt and cure must reach the whole thickness of the meat evenly. Regular turning and re-rubbing keep the cure in contact with every surface, so the ham cures uniformly rather than spoiling in spots.
“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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