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Pork Hams

A pork hind‑quarter cured with saltpetre, sugar, salt, and salprunella, then hung and boiled.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Pork and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 37% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,579 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Pork Hams

Ingredients

Directions

Cure

  1. Cut a fine ham from the hind-quarter of pork.

  2. Mix saltpetre, coarse sugar, common salt, and salprunella together and rub it well onto the ham.

  3. Let the ham sit in the pickle for one month, turning and basting it daily.

  4. Hang the ham in wood-smoke in a dry place, avoiding heat.

  5. For long-term storage, hang it in a damp place for one to two months to develop mold.

Soak and boil

  1. Do not soak the ham in water until ready to boil.

  2. Place the ham in a large pot with cold water and let it sit for four to five hours before boiling.

  3. Skim the pot frequently until it boils.

  4. Boil the ham for two hours if small, or three hours if large, ensuring it boils for at least four hours.

Finish and serve

  1. Remove the ham half an hour before serving, peel off the skin, and sift raspings over it.

  2. Hold a red-hot fire shovel over the ham before serving.

  3. Sift additional raspings over the dish and place the ham in the center.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

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.

  1. Pork + sugartop 37% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,579 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Pork hind-quarter
Provides the main cut of meat that becomes the ham.
Saltpetre
Helps the cure keep its pink colour and inhibits spoilage-causing bacteria.
Coarse sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the harshness of the salt in the cure.
Common salt
Draws out moisture and preserves the meat during the long cure.
Salprunella
Adds to the curing mixture as a further preservative and seasoning.

The step that matters

Boiling time and soaking. The ham must soak long enough to draw out excess salt, then boil long enough to cook through. Too little soaking leaves it overly salty, and boiling below a steady simmer or for too short a time leaves the centre undercooked.

“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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