Why it works: Beer and pepper work together. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 940 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓
To Cure Hams
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the pickle
Hang the ham for three days in a cool place.
Mix saltpetre, coarse sea salt, common salt, coarsest sugar, and strong beer in a pot and boil together.
Pour the mixture over the ham immediately.
Cure and smoke
Turn the ham twice a day in the pickle for three weeks.
Add black pepper and pimento to the pickle for extra flavor.
Cover the ham with bran after wiping it dry.
Smoke the ham for three to four weeks, depending on your preference.
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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Beer + peppertop 16% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together940 recipes
Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
-
Sugar + beertop 22% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together699 recipes
Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
-
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
- Saltpetre
- Preserves the meat and gives cured ham its characteristic pink color.
- Coarse sea salt
- Draws moisture out of the meat and seasons it during curing.
- Common salt
- Draws moisture out of the meat and seasons it during curing.
- Coarsest sugar
- Balances the salt and adds a mild sweetness to the cured flavor.
- Strong beer
- Carries the cure into the ham and adds malty flavor to the pickle.
The step that matters
Turn the ham twice a day in the pickle for three weeks. The brine must reach every part of the ham evenly. Regular turning keeps the salt and cure in contact with all surfaces, so the cure penetrates uniformly and no area stays under-salted or spoils.
“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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