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 ↓
New England Ham
Ingredients
Directions
Cure the hams
Beat the saltpetre fine and rub it into the hams.
Let them sit for 24 hours.
Mix the coarse sea salt, common salt, saltpetre, and coarse sugar.
Rub this mixture into the hams and let them sit for 2 to 3 days.
Brine and smoke
Prepare a strong brine with 2 gallons of water and ½ pound of brown sugar, then boil it.
Let it cool and skim off any foam.
Submerge the hams in the brine and turn them every 2 to 3 days for 3 weeks.
Hang the hams in a chimney and smoke them for 1 to 2 days using horse litter.
Let them hang for a week by the kitchen chimney.
Take them down.
Store
Store the hams dry in a large box covered with bran.
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
- Hams
- The main meat; the cure and brine penetrate it to preserve and season it.
- Saltpetre
- Helps preserve the meat and gives the cured ham its characteristic pink color.
- Coarse sea salt
- Draws moisture out of the meat and seasons it during the dry cure.
- Common salt
- Seasons the meat and helps draw out moisture during curing.
- Coarse sugar
- Balances the saltiness and softens the harshness of the cure.
- Brown sugar
- Adds sweetness and a mellow flavor to the brine.
The step that matters
Rubbing the cure into the hams. The dry cure must cover the meat evenly and reach the bone. Uneven coverage lets parts spoil or cure unevenly, so the salt and saltpetre need to be worked well into every part of each ham.
“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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