Why it works: Sugar and molasses are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,225 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓
Directions for Curing Ham or Bacon
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the hogs
Feed hogs corn for eight weeks before slaughtering.
Cure the meat
Rub the outside of each ham with saltpetre and the inside with cayenne pepper.
Mix brown sugar and fine salt in a ratio of 1.5 pounds of sugar to 1 pint of salt.
Rub the pork well with the sugar and salt mixture.
Layer the meat in large tubs with skin side down, sprinkling salt between layers.
After eight days, remove the meat, wipe off the salt, and wash the tubs.
Make and apply the pickle
Prepare a pickle with equal parts of salt and molasses, adding 4 ounces of saltpetre for every 2 quarts of each.
Boil and skim the pickle, then let it cool before pouring it over the meat.
Turn the meat daily and baste it with the pickle.
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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Sugar + molassestop 11% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together9,225 recipes
Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
-
Pepper + molassestop 31% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together897 recipes
Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
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Pepper + sugartop 32% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together19,401 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Pepper and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 19,401 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
What each ingredient does
- Saltpetre
- Preserves the meat and gives it a pink cured colour.
- Brown sugar
- Adds sweetness and balances the harsh flavour of the salt.
- Fine salt
- Draws out moisture and preserves the meat during curing.
- Molasses
- Adds sweetness, deep colour and a rich flavour to the pickle.
The step that matters
Boil and skim the pickle before cooling it. Boiling dissolves the salt and sugars fully and skimming removes impurities that could spoil the cure. The pickle must cool before it touches the meat, since heat would partly cook the surface and disturb the cure.
“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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