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Venison Hams

Smoked venison hams cured with salt, sugar, saltpetre, bran, and hickory smoke.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Venison and ham work together. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 85 recipes. Both carry 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline, which smells popcorn, roasted. The science ↓

Venison Hams

Ingredients

Directions

Cure

  1. Use freshly killed venison hams.

  2. Mix equal parts of coarse sea salt and brown sugar, and rub the mixture into the hams.

  3. Place the hams in a tub and let them sit for seven days, turning and rubbing them daily with the salt and sugar mixture.

  4. Combine 2 ounces of saltpetre with a handful of common salt and rub the mixture into the hams.

  5. Let the hams sit for another week.

Smoke and store

  1. Wipe the hams, rub them with bran, and smoke them for two weeks over hickory wood.

  2. Pack the hams in wood ashes.

  3. Serve the venison ham sliced or shredded, as it is not cooked before eating.

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. Venison + hamtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  2. Ham + sugartop 33% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,084 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Venison + sugartop 33% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together186 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Venison hams
The main meat, which is preserved by curing and smoking rather than cooked.
Coarse sea salt
Draws moisture out of the meat and helps preserve it during curing.
Brown sugar
Balances the salt and adds a mild sweetness to the cured surface.
Saltpetre
Helps preserve the meat's colour and inhibits spoilage bacteria during the long cure.
Hickory wood
Adds smoky aroma and flavour to the meat and helps dry its surface.

The step that matters

Curing the hams with salt and saltpetre. Because the venison is never cooked, the cure is the only thing making it safe to eat. The salt mixture must fully penetrate the meat over the full curing time, so the hams should be turned and rubbed as directed rather than rushed.

“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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