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 leg
Choose a fine-grained leg of wether-mutton, cut it into ham shape, and hang it for two days.
Cure
In a stew-pan, mix the coarse sea salt, common salt, saltpetre, and coarse sugar, then heat until hot.
Rub the mixture well into the ham, then turn it in the liquid every day.
After four days, add 2 ounces more common salt.
After twelve days, take it out, dry it, and hang it in wood-smoke for a week.
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 cured and smoked into ham.
- Coarse sea salt
- Draws out moisture and seasons the meat during curing.
- Saltpetre
- Helps preserve the meat and gives the cured colour.
- Coarse sugar
- Balances the saltiness and softens the harshness of the cure.
The step that matters
Turning the ham in the liquid daily. The cure must reach every part of the meat evenly. Turning it daily keeps the brine in contact with all surfaces, so salt penetrates uniformly and spoilage is less likely.
“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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