Why it works: Mutton and sugar work together. They rank in the top 34% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 726 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓
Mutton Ham
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the ham
Choose a fine-grained leg of wether-mutton and cut it into ham shape.
Hang the meat for two days.
Cure
In a stewpan, mix the salts and sugar, then heat until hot.
Rub the mixture well into the ham.
Turn the ham in the mixture every day.
After four days, add 2 ounces more common salt.
After twelve days, take it out, dry it, and hang it in wood smoke for a week.
Serve
Slice and serve with stewed cabbage, mashed potatoes, or eggs.
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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Mutton + sugartop 34% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together726 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Wether-mutton leg
- Forms the ham itself; its dense lean muscle is what the cure penetrates and firms.
- Coarse sea salt
- Draws out moisture and seasons the meat, slowing spoilage during curing.
- Common salt
- Adds salinity that draws moisture from the meat and helps preserve it during curing.
- Saltpetre
- Helps the meat keep its pink colour and inhibits harmful bacteria during long curing.
- Coarse sugar
- Balances the saltiness with sweetness and helps soften the harshness of the cure.
The step that matters
Rubbing and turning the ham in the cure. The salt mixture must reach every part of the meat, and turning it daily keeps the cure evenly distributed. Uneven coverage lets some areas spoil or cure unevenly over the long curing period.
“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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