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Veal Hams

Cured veal leg prepared as a ham using salt, saltpetre, juniper berries, smoking, and roasting.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Veal and ham are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,264 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Veal Hams

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cure

  1. Mix the coarse sea salt, saltpetre, common salt, and juniper berries together.

  2. Rub the mixture well into the ham.

Cure and smoke

  1. Lay the ham in a tray, skin side down, and baste it daily for two weeks.

  2. Hang the ham in wood smoke for an additional two weeks.

Cook

  1. Boil or parboil the ham, then roast it as desired.

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.

  1. Veal + hamtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,264 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Veal leg
The main cut, whose muscle and fat become the ham's texture and flavour.
Common salt
Draws moisture out of the meat and helps preserve it during the long cure.
Saltpetre
Helps preserve the meat and gives cured meat its pink colour.
Coarse sea salt
Adds salt to the cure, drawing out moisture and helping preserve the meat.
Juniper berries
Adds aromatic, resinous flavour to the cure.

The step that matters

Rub and baste the cure evenly. The salt and saltpetre must penetrate the meat evenly over the long cure. Missed spots or skipped daily basting leave areas under-cured, which weakens preservation and colour.

“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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