Mutton Ham
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the leg
Choose a fine-grained leg of wether mutton in ham shape.
Hang the leg for two days.
Cure the leg
In a stew pan, combine the coarse sea salt, common salt, and saltpetre.
Rub the salt mixture all over the mutton leg.
Hang the leg again for proper curing.
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
- Wether mutton leg
- The main meat, which the salt cure penetrates and firms as it dries.
- Coarse sea salt
- Draws moisture out of the meat and seasons it, slowing spoilage during curing.
- Common salt
- Adds further salt to draw moisture out and season the meat evenly.
- Saltpetre
- Helps keep the cured meat pink and gives it the characteristic cured flavour.
The step that matters
Rubbing the salt mixture all over the leg. Salt only preserves where it reaches. Missed or thin patches let spoilage start, while even coverage draws out moisture and cures the whole leg uniformly.
“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.
More mutton ham recipes
You might also like
Tomato Soup526 recipes
Brown Bread461 recipes
Mutton Broth292 recipes
Yorkshire Pudding264 recipesThe free Flavor Lab newsletter: one surprising pairing a week and the molecular reason it works, in 60 seconds. No spam, unsubscribe anytime.
Prefer an account? Create a free account to save pairings and unlock the full chemistry.