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 two days.
Cure
In a stew-pan, mix ½ pound of coarse sea salt, ½ pound of common salt, 2 ounces of saltpetre, and ½ pound of powdered sugar, then heat the mixture until hot.
Rub the mixture well into the ham.
Turn the ham in the liquor every day.
After four days, add 2 ounces more of common salt.
After twelve days, take the ham out, dry it, and hang it up in wood smoke for one week.
Serve
Slice and serve 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.
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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 salted, cured and smoked into ham.
- Coarse sea salt
- Draws out moisture and seasons the meat during the cure.
- Common salt
- Draws out moisture and seasons the meat, added in two portions during curing.
- Saltpetre
- Preserves the meat's pink colour and helps guard against spoilage during curing.
- Coarse sugar
- Balances the saltiness and softens the harshness of the cure.
The step that matters
Turn the ham in the liquor every day. Daily turning keeps the brine in contact with all surfaces so the salt and saltpetre cure the meat evenly. Skipping turns can leave parts under-cured 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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