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 ↓
To Smoke a Mutton Ham
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the cure
Trim the leg of mutton into the shape of a ham and let it hang for 2 days.
In a thick saucepan, heat the coarse sea salt, table salt, brown sugar, and powdered saltpetre until warm.
Rub the warm mixture thoroughly into the ham.
Cure and dry
Place the ham in a wooden or earthen vessel and let it stand for 4 days, turning it daily.
On the fourth day, rub a handful of dry salt over the ham and let it stand for 2 more days.
Afterward, dry the ham and hang it in wood smoke for 1 week.
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
- Forms the meat that is cured, dried and smoked into the ham.
- Coarse sea salt
- Draws moisture out of the meat and seasons it during curing.
- Table salt
- Adds further salt to draw moisture out and season the meat during curing.
- Brown sugar
- Balances the saltiness and adds a mild sweetness to the cured meat.
- Powdered saltpetre
- Helps preserve the meat and gives it a characteristic pink-red colour during curing.
The step that matters
Rubbing the warm cure thoroughly into the ham. Salt and saltpetre only preserve the meat where they reach it, so uneven rubbing leaves spots that can spoil or cure unevenly during the long rest.
“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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