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Venison Hams

Venison hams are cured with salt, sugar, molasses, bran, and smoked over hickory.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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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 ↓

Venison Hams

Ingredients

Directions

Cure

  1. Rub equal parts of coarse sea salt and brown sugar into the hams.

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

  3. Rub equal parts of West India molasses and fine salt over the hams and let them sit for another week.

Smoke and pack

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

  2. Pack the hams in wood ashes or charcoal if they are to be shipped.

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. Sugar + molassestop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Coarse sea salt and brown sugar
Salt and sugar cure the meat, drawing out moisture and seasoning it.
West india molasses and fine salt
A second cure that adds sweetness and further seasons the meat.
Hickory wood
Smoke flavours the surface of the hams and helps preserve them.

The step that matters

Rubbing the hams with the salt and sugar mixture daily during the first cure. Turning and rubbing spreads the cure evenly over the surface, so salt penetrates uniformly and no area is left under-cured or spoiling.

“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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