Why it works: Sugar and lime are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 29% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,332 recipes. Both carry 1-penten-3-one, which smells fish, pungent. The science ↓
For Curing Hams
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the leg
Choose a fat, well-fed leg of hog at least 1 year old.
Sprinkle the leg with a little salt and let it drain for 1 day.
Cure in salt
Rub the leg thoroughly with ½ cup coarse sea salt, ½ cup sugar, ¼ cup common salt, and 4 oz. saltpetre.
Lay the leg rind down and cover the fleshy parts with the salt mixture, basting frequently and turning every 2 days.
Keep it in the salt for 4 weeks, then drain and cover with bran.
Dry and age
Hang the ham in a cool place to dry.
Sew it up in a coarse linen wrapper rubbed with lime and do not dress it until it is at least 3 months old.
For better flavor, smoke the ham for 3 weeks using oak wood.
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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Sugar + limetop 29% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together3,332 recipes
Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Leg of hog
- Provides the meat that is salted, dried and aged into ham.
- Coarse sea salt
- Draws moisture out of the meat and helps preserve it.
- Sugar
- Softens the harshness of the salt and adds mild sweetness to the cure.
- Common salt
- Adds to the preserving effect and draws moisture out of the meat.
- Saltpetre
- Helps preserve the meat and gives the cured flesh its pink colour.
The step that matters
Keeping the leg covered and basting during the salt cure. Salt must reach every fleshy part evenly. Basting and turning the leg redistributes the brine-like liquid drawn from the meat, so no area is left unsalted and open to spoilage.
“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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