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 cure
Cut the leg of mutton into ham shape and hang for 2 days.
In a stew-pan, mix hay salt, common salt, saltpetre, and coarse sugar in powder.
Heat the mixture and rub it well into the ham.
Cure
Turn the ham in the mixture every day.
After 4 days, add 2 ounces more of common salt.
After 12 days, take it out, dry it, and hang it in wood smoke for a week.
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 lean meat is what the cure penetrates and firms.
- Hay salt
- Draws moisture out of the meat and seasons it during the long cure.
- Common salt
- Preserves the meat by slowing bacterial growth and adds salty flavour.
- Saltpetre
- Helps the cured meat keep its pink colour and inhibits spoilage bacteria.
- Coarse sugar
- Balances the salt with sweetness and softens the harshness of the cure.
The step that matters
Turning the ham in the cure every day. Salt and curing agents penetrate meat slowly and unevenly. Daily turning keeps the cure in contact with all surfaces, so the ham cures evenly instead of spoiling or staying salty in spots.
“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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