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To Make Ham Butter to West-phalia

A cured ham prepared with sugar, salt, saltpetre, vinegar, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 92,116 recipes. Both carry phenylacetaldehyde, which smells hawthorne, honey. The science ↓

To Make Ham Butter to West-phalia

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the hams

  1. Cut out the round bone from the hams to make them thinner.

  2. Rub the hams with common salt and leave them in a large pan for three days.

Cure

  1. After three days, discard the brine and mix sugar, salt, and saltpetre.

  2. Rub the mixture well into the hams and place them in a large vessel, keeping the salt over them.

  3. After three days, pour a bottle of vinegar over the hams.

  4. Cure the hams for one month, turning them in the brine often.

Dry and hang

  1. When done, drain the hams, dust them with coarse flour, and hang them in a dry place.

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 + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  2. Sugar + vinegartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  3. Ham + vinegartop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together737 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-methylbutanol (malty, whiskey).

  4. Vinegar + flourtop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,652 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Ham + flourtop 33% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

What each ingredient does

Hams
The main meat that is salted, cured and dried over the course of the recipe.
Saltpetre
Preserves the meat's pink colour and helps inhibit spoilage during curing.
Coarse sea salt
Draws moisture out of the meat and seasons it during the cure.
Moist sugar
Balances the salt with sweetness and softens the harshness of the cure.
Vinegar
Adds acidity to the brine, contributing tang and helping preserve the meat.

The step that matters

Keep the hams turned in the brine during the month-long cure. Turning keeps the brine in contact with all surfaces so salt and cure penetrate evenly. Uneven contact can leave parts under-cured and prone to spoilage.

“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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