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To Cure Hams

A method for curing hams using a salt, sugar, saltpeter, and baking soda brine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Ham and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 33% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,084 recipes. Both carry phenylacetaldehyde, which smells hawthorne, honey. The science ↓

To Cure Hams

Ingredients

Directions

Dry layer

  1. Cover the bottom of a large cask with coarse sea salt.

  2. Lay the hams in the cask with the skin side down.

  3. Sprinkle fine salt over the hams.

  4. Continue layering hams and salt until the cask is full.

Make and add the brine

  1. In a pot, combine 6 gallons of water, 9 pounds of coarse sea salt, 4 pounds of brown sugar, 4 ounces of saltpeter, and 1 ounce of baking soda.

  2. Scald and skim the mixture, then let it cool.

  3. Pour the brine into the cask over the hams.

Cure

  1. Let the hams cure in the brine for at least 3 months.

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. Ham + sugartop 33% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,084 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

Coarse sea salt
Draws moisture out of the meat and seasons it, slowing spoilage during curing.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the salt, and feeds the flavor of the cured meat.
Saltpeter
Helps the cure keep its pink color and supports preservation during long curing.

The step that matters

Let the hams cure in the brine for at least 3 months. Salt must fully penetrate the thick meat to preserve it. Cutting the curing time short can leave the centre 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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