Why it works: Ham and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 33% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,084 recipes. Both carry phenylacetaldehyde, which smells hawthorne, honey. The science ↓
Bacon
Ingredients
Directions
Salt and drain
Cut off the hams and head of the pig, removing the chine but leaving the spare ribs.
Salt the meat with common salt and a little saltpetre, then let it sit for 10 days to drain.
After 10 days, salt it again for 10 to 12 days, turning it daily after the second salting.
Scrape the meat well.
Rub a little salt on it.
Hang it up to dry.
Alternative method
For another method, remove all inside fat from a side of pork and lay it on a board to drain.
Rub both sides with good salt and let it sit for a day.
Mix 1 pint of coarse sea salt, ¼ pound of finely beaten saltpetre, 2 pounds of coarse sugar, and common salt.
Rub the pork with this mixture, skin side down.
Baste it daily with the pickle for 14 days.
Smoke and hang
Hang the pork first in wood smoke.
Hang it in a dry place, ensuring it does not touch the wall.
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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Ham + sugartop 33% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together1,084 recipes
Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Common salt
- Draws moisture out of the meat and preserves it through the cure.
- Saltpetre
- Helps preserve the meat and gives the cured colour and flavour.
- Coarse sugar
- Balances the salt and adds sweetness to the cured flavour.
- Coarse sea salt
- Forms the salt base of the pickle that is basted onto the pork.
The step that matters
Salting and turning during the long cure. Salt must penetrate evenly through the thick meat. Uneven salting or skipping the daily turning lets some areas stay wet or spoil, so the cure fails to preserve the whole piece.
“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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