Name: To Cure Hams, Bacon, Tongues
Ingredients: 1 ham; ½ pound coarse sea salt; ½ pound coarse sugar; ¼ pound saltpetre

Why it works: Ham and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 33% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,084 recipes. Both carry phenylacetaldehyde, which smells hawthorne, honey. The science ↓

To Cure Hams, Bacon, Tongues

Ingredients

1 ham
½ pound coarse sea salt
½ pound coarse sugar
¼ pound saltpetre

Directions

Hang the ham for 2-3 days in a cool place before salting.
Beat the ham with a rolling pin or thick stick.
Mix the salt, sugar, and saltpetre together and warm them by the fire.
Rub the mixture thoroughly into the ham.
Place the ham in a pan.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

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.

Ham + sugartop 33% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together1,084 recipes

Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

Green Corn Pudding64 recipes

Cornmeal mush12 recipes

Like knowing why a recipe works?

The 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.

To Cure Hams, Bacon, Tongues