Why it works: Sugar and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 32% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,401 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓
To Cure Hams
Ingredients
Directions
Dry cure
Mix the coarse sea salt, saltpetre, brown sugar, and pepper in a bowl.
Rub the mixture well into the hams a few times.
Slightly rub the hams with fine salt and pack them firmly into a barrel.
Brine and rest
After 2 days, mix the salt mixture with water and pour it over the hams to cover them.
Let the hams remain in the brine for 6 weeks before smoking.
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 + peppertop 32% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together19,401 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Sugar and pepper 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
- Coarse sea salt
- Draws moisture out of the meat and makes it inhospitable to spoilage microbes, preserving the ham.
- Saltpetre
- Helps preserve the ham's pink colour and further inhibits harmful bacteria during curing.
- Brown sugar
- Balances the harshness of the salt and adds a mellow sweetness and depth of flavour.
The step that matters
Keeping the hams fully covered in brine. Salt only cures the meat it touches. Any part left above the brine can dry out or spoil, so the hams must stay submerged for the full six weeks.
“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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