Hams, to Pickle
Ingredients
Directions
Cure the ham
Mix the coarse sea salt, saltpetre, and black pepper together.
Rub the mixture thoroughly onto the ham and let it sit for four days, turning and rubbing daily.
After four days, pour 1½ lb of treacle over the ham and let it stand for a month, turning, basting, and rubbing daily.
Soak and dry
After a month, lift the ham out, soak it for 24 hours, then dry it carefully.
Sew the ham up in coarse cloth and hang it to dry.
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
What each ingredient does
- Coarse sea salt
- Draws moisture out of the meat and preserves it by limiting bacterial growth.
- Saltpetre
- Helps preserve the ham and gives cured meat its characteristic pink colour.
- Treacle
- Adds sweetness and flavour, and its sugars help the surface brown and darken during curing.
The step that matters
Rubbing the cure in evenly and turning daily. Salt and saltpetre only preserve the parts they reach. Uneven coverage or skipped turning leaves spots where the cure penetrates poorly and spoilage can start, so the ham must be handled consistently over the long cure.
“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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