Why it works: Mutton and sugar work together. They rank in the top 34% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 726 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓
Mutton Ham
Ingredients
Directions
Cure
Rub the mutton leg with sugar, salt, and saltpetre.
Place the meat in a deep dish and turn it twice a day for three days.
Remove any scum from the meat, wipe it, and rub it again with the mixture.
Roll the meat and continue turning it for 8 to 10 days.
Smoke
Expose the meat to smoke for 10 to 12 days or dip it in pyroligneous acid.
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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Mutton + sugartop 34% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together726 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Mutton leg
- Provides the large, fatty cut that is cured and dried into ham.
- Raw sugar
- Balances the salt and adds mild sweetness to the cure.
- Coarse sea salt
- Draws out moisture and seasons the meat while preserving it.
- Saltpetre
- Helps preserve the meat's colour and inhibits spoilage during long curing.
The step that matters
Turning the meat during the cure. Salt and cure mixture penetrate unevenly, so regular turning and re-rubbing distribute the brine and draw moisture out evenly, reducing spoilage risk in a large cut.
“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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