Skip to main content
Main

Recipe Fob Hams

This recipe describes curing hams with sugar, saltpeter, and rock salt, then smoking after six weeks.

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

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 ↓

Recipe Fob Hams

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the pickle

  1. Pack the hams in a barrel as closely as possible, adding a little salt.

  2. In a boiler, combine 5 pounds of brown sugar, ¼ pound of saltpeter, and enough rock salt to dissolve in 5 pails of water.

  3. Bring the mixture to a boil, skimming well.

Cure and smoke

  1. While boiling hot, pour the mixture over the hams and cover tightly.

  2. Leave the hams in the pickle for six weeks, then drain and smoke.

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

Hams
The meat being cured, which the brine penetrates and preserves over the six weeks.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the saltiness of the cure.
Saltpeter
Helps the meat keep its pink color and inhibits spoilage during curing.
Rock salt
Draws moisture out of the meat and seasons it as the brine penetrates.

The step that matters

Pouring the boiling pickle over the hams. The mixture must be hot while it is poured so it can be fully dissolved and skimmed, and the hams must be covered tightly so the brine stays in contact with the meat throughout the long 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.

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesYorkshire PuddingYorkshire Pudding264 recipes