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Westphalia Ham

A ham cured by rubbing with saltpetre and sugar, then boiled in beer with spices, left to sit, and smoked.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,451 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Westphalia Ham

Ingredients

Directions

Cure

  1. Rub each ham well with pounded saltpetre and coarse brown sugar.

  2. The next day, boil beer or porter with coarse sea salt, common salt, coarse brown sugar, black pepper, cloves, and sal prunella, then pour the boiling mixture over the ham.

  3. Let it sit for two weeks, rubbing and turning it two to three times daily.

Smoke

  1. Afterward, smoke the ham for another two weeks.

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. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  2. Beer + clovetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together284 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Beer + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together940 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  4. Sugar + beertop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together699 recipes

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

  5. Sugar + clovetop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together17,182 recipes

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

Sugar and clove barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 17,182 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

Saltpetre
Cures the meat, fixing its pink color and helping preserve it during long curing.
Coarse sea salt
Draws out moisture and seasons the ham, helping preserve it during the cure.
Coarse brown sugar
Balances the salt with sweetness and feeds the flavor of the cure.
Beer or porter
Carries the salts and spices into the ham and adds malty depth of flavor.

The step that matters

Rubbing and turning the ham during the two-week cure. Salt and cure penetrate unevenly, so regular rubbing and turning spreads the brine and curing agents across the whole ham and prevents spoilage or dry, uneven patches.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, beer, pepper):

  1. Gingerfits about as well
  2. Cinnamonfits about as well
  3. Clovethe original
  4. Thymefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, beer, pepper. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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