Why it works: Mutton and sugar work together. They rank in the top 34% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 726 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓
Mutton Ham
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the ham
Choose a fine-grained leg of wether-mutton and cut it into ham shape.
Hang the ham for 2 days.
Cure
In a stew-pan, mix ½ pound coarse sea salt, ½ pound common salt, 2 ounces saltpetre, and ½ pound powdered coarse sugar.
Heat the mixture until hot.
Rub the mixture well into the ham.
Turn the ham in the liquid every day.
After 4 days, add 2 ounces more common salt.
After 12 days, take the ham out.
Dry, smoke and serve
Dry the ham.
Hang the ham in wood smoke for 1 week.
Serve the ham in slices with stewed cabbage, mashed potatoes, or eggs.
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.
-
Mutton + sugartop 34% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together726 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Wether-mutton leg
- Provides the meat that is cured and smoked into ham.
- Coarse sea salt
- Draws out moisture and seasons the meat during curing.
- Saltpetre
- Helps the meat keep its pink colour and inhibits spoilage during curing.
- Coarse sugar
- Balances the saltiness and adds sweetness to the cure.
- Common salt
- Adds salt that penetrates the meat and preserves it during curing.
The step that matters
Rub the mixture well into the ham. Salt and cure must reach all parts of the meat evenly; thin or missed areas can spoil or cure unevenly during the long soak.
“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.
More mutton ham recipes
You might also like
Mutton Broth292 recipes
Haricot Mutton59 recipes
Mutton Soup56 recipes
Curried Mutton9 recipesThe free Flavor Lab newsletter: one surprising pairing a week and the molecular reason it works, in 60 seconds. No spam, unsubscribe anytime.
Prefer an account? Create a free account to save pairings and unlock the full chemistry.