To Salt Hams
Ingredients
Directions
Dry salt the hams
Pound and mix together the coarse sea salt, salt prunella, and saltpetre.
Rub the hams well with the mixture.
Lay any remaining salt over the hams.
Let the hams sit for three days.
Hang the hams up.
Make and use the brine
Take the brine from the hams.
Add enough water to cover the hams.
Add more common salt until the brine can float an egg.
Boil the brine and skim it well.
Pour the brine into a salting tub.
The next morning, submerge the hams in the brine.
Keep the hams submerged like pickled pork.
After two weeks, remove the hams from the brine.
Rub the hams with more brine.
Hang the hams up to dry.
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
What each ingredient does
- Hams
- The main meat that is cured, firmed and preserved by the salt and brine.
- Coarse sea salt
- Draws moisture out of the meat and carries the curing mixture into it.
- Saltpetre
- Helps preserve the meat and gives cured hams their pink colour.
- Salt prunella
- Adds to the salt mixture used to cure the hams, aiding preservation.
The step that matters
Adding common salt until the brine can float an egg. The egg test checks that the brine is strong enough to preserve the hams. Too weak a brine may let the meat spoil, while the salt concentration controls how well it cures.
“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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