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 ↓
To Cure a Ham
Ingredients
Directions
Cure
Rub the pork with saltpetre and brown sugar, and let it sit for several hours.
Cover the meat with a mixture of coarse sea salt and common salt.
After four days, add treacle and turn the ham daily, basting with the pickle for one month.
Dry and wrap
Hang the ham to drain overnight, then wrap it in brown paper.
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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Pork + sugartop 37% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked 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
- Leg of pork
- Is the meat being cured, so its texture and flavour develop through the salting.
- Saltpetre
- Helps preserve the meat and gives cured ham its characteristic pink colour.
- Coarse sea salt
- Draws moisture out of the meat and helps preserve it during curing.
- Common salt
- Draws moisture out of the meat and seasons the ham as it cures.
- Very brown sugar
- Adds sweetness and balances the saltiness of the cure.
- Treacle
- Adds sweetness and a deep molasses flavour to the pickle and ham surface.
The step that matters
Turning and basting the ham daily for one month. Regular turning and basting keep the cure evenly distributed over the meat so salt and curing agents penetrate uniformly. Skipping turns can leave some areas under-cured and others overly salty.
“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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