Name: Westphalia Ham, to Cure. No. 3
Ingredients: 3 pounds brown sugar; 4 ounces saltpetre; ½ pound bay salt (coarse sea salt); ½ pound common salt; ½ pound coarse sugar; 1 quart stale strong beer

Why it works: Sugar and beer work together. They rank in the top 22% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 699 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Westphalia Ham, to Cure. No. 3

Ingredients

Directions

Cure

Rub each ham with saltpetre.
Mix bay salt, common salt, and coarse sugar into the beer.
Boil the mixture and pour it hot over the hams.
Let the hams sit in the mixture for 14 days, rubbing and turning them twice daily.

Smoke

Smoke the hams for 3 days and nights over sawdust and horse litter.
Then smoke them for 2 weeks over a wood fire.

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.

Sugar + beertop 22% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together699 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

What each ingredient does

Saltpetre: Sets the meat's pink colour and helps preserve it during curing.
Bay salt: Draws out moisture and seasons the ham as part of the cure.
Common salt: Draws out moisture and preserves the meat during the long cure.
Brown sugar: Balances the saltiness and adds flavour and some browning during smoking.
Stale strong beer: Carries the dissolved cure into the meat and adds malty flavour.

The step that matters

Turning the hams in the cure. The hams cure for 14 days, and rubbing and turning them keeps the brine in contact with all surfaces. Uneven contact lets some areas spoil or cure unevenly, because salt and nitrate penetrate the meat slowly from the outside in.

“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.

Tomato Soup526 recipes

Brown Bread461 recipes

Mutton Broth292 recipes

Yorkshire Pudding264 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.

Westphalia Ham, to Cure. No. 3