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
Choose a fat, well-fed hog log at least one year old.
Sprinkle the log with a little salt and let it drain for a day.
Cure
Mix one pound each of coarse sea salt, coarse sugar, and common salt with four ounces of saltpetre.
Rub the mixture thoroughly into the ham, covering the fleshy parts.
Baste the ham frequently and turn it every second day for four weeks.
After four weeks, drain the ham and cover it with bran.
Dry and age
Hang the ham in a cool place to dry.
Wrap it in a coarse linen wrapper rubbed with lime and do not dress it until it is three months old.
For better flavor, smoke the ham for three 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
- Hog log
- Provides the meat and fat that the cure penetrates and the ham is aged from.
- Coarse sea salt
- Draws moisture out of the meat and helps preserve it during curing.
- Common salt
- Draws moisture out of the meat and helps preserve it during curing.
- Coarse sugar
- Balances the salt and adds a mild sweetness to the cured flavor.
- Saltpetre
- Helps preserve the meat and gives the cured ham its characteristic colour.
The step that matters
Rubbing the cure thoroughly into the ham. Salt and saltpetre only preserve the meat where they reach. Uneven coverage, especially on thick fleshy parts, leaves spots that can spoil or cure unevenly, so the mixture must be worked in well and the ham basted and turned during the cure.
“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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