Name: To Make a Beef Ham
Ingredients: 20 pounds rump of beef; 3 ounces saltpetre; ¼ pound brown sugar; ½ pound coarse sea salt (formerly 'bay salt'); ½ ounce white pepper; ¼ ounce cloves; 1-2 nutmeg

Why it works: Clove and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,686 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

To Make a Beef Ham

Ingredients

Directions

Cure

Mix saltpetre, brown sugar, coarse sea salt, white pepper, cloves, and nutmeg together.
Rub the mixture well into the ham.
Cover the ham with common salt and let it lie in this pickle for three weeks, turning it every other day.

Dry

After three weeks, hang the ham up to dry.

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.

Clove + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together8,686 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
White pepper + nutmegtop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together1,375 recipes

Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).
Beef + nutmegtop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,495 recipes

Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).
Beef + clovetop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together5,462 recipes

Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).
Sugar + nutmegtop 20% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together23,364 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

Sugar and nutmeg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 23,364 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Rump of beef: Forms the main meat that is cured and dried into the ham.
Saltpetre: Preserves the meat and gives cured ham its characteristic color.
Brown sugar: Balances the salt and adds mild sweetness to the cure.
Coarse sea salt: Draws out moisture and seasons the meat during curing.
Common salt: Surrounds the meat to draw out moisture and season it through the pickle.