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Sugar-cured Hams and Bacon

A method of curing hams and bacon with salt, sugar, saltpeter, and water over several weeks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Meat and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 34% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,866 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Sugar-cured Hams and Bacon

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meat

  1. Cool the meat.

  2. Rub each piece with salt.

  3. Allow it to drain overnight.

Pack and brine

  1. Pack the meat in a barrel, placing hams and shoulders at the bottom and using strips of bacon to fill in between or on top.

  2. Dissolve the salt, brown sugar, and saltpeter in the water.

  3. For summer use, boil the brine and cool it before using.

  4. For winter curing, boiling is not necessary.

  5. Cover the meat with the brine.

  6. Soak bacon strips in the brine for 4 to 6 weeks and hams for 6 to 8 weeks.

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. Meat + sugartop 34% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,866 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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 by inhibiting spoilage microbes.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the harshness of the salt in the cure.
Saltpeter
Helps the meat keep its pink color and adds to the preservation of the cure.

The step that matters

Boiling the brine for summer use. Summer curing happens in warmer conditions where spoilage bacteria grow faster, so the brine should be boiled to reduce contaminating microbes and then cooled fully before the meat is covered.

“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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