Why it works: Ham and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 33% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,516 recipes. Both carry phenylacetaldehyde, which smells hawthorne, honey. The science ↓
Hams
Ingredients
Directions
Mix together the coarse sea salt, salt-prunella, saltpetre, and coarse salt.
Rub the mixture well into the hams and cover them with any remaining mixture.
Let the hams sit for three days, then hang them up.
Prepare a brine by adding enough water to cover the hams with more coarse salt until it can float an egg.
Boil the brine and skim it well, then pour it into a salting tub.
The next morning, submerge the hams in the brine.
Keep the hams submerged like pickled pork.
After two weeks, remove the hams from the brine, rub them with bran, and hang them up to dry.
Optionally, rub the hams with flour before hanging.
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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Ham + flourtop 33% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together2,516 recipes
Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
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