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To Imitate Westphalia Ham

This recipe uses saltpetre, which may pose food safety risks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,451 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

To Imitate Westphalia Ham

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Rub the hams with a mixture of saltpetre and brown sugar.

  2. Prepare a pickle by boiling together salt, brown sugar, black pepper, cloves, sal prunella, and beer until it can float an egg.

  3. Pour the hot pickle over the hams and let them soak for two weeks, turning and basting them daily.

  4. After two weeks, remove the hams, rub them with bran, and smoke them for two weeks.

  5. To shape the hams like Westphalia hams, trim the underside before curing and sew the skin back on.

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 + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  2. Clove + beertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together284 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Pepper + beertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together940 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  4. Sugar + beertop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together699 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Sugar + clovetop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together17,182 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

Sugar and clove barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 17,182 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

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, pepper, beer):

  1. Gingerfits about as well
  2. Cinnamonfits about as well
  3. Clovethe original
  4. Thymefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, pepper, beer. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

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