To Pickle Hams
Ingredients
Directions
Make the brine
Boil the water with brown sugar, coarse sea salt, and saltpeter, then skim the surface.
Allow the mixture to cool.
Cure and dry
Submerge the hams in the brine and let them soak for six weeks.
Remove the hams from the brine.
Hang the hams in a dry, cool place.
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 during curing.
- Saltpeter
- Helps preserve the meat and keeps its color pink during curing.
- Brown sugar
- Adds sweetness and balances the harshness of the salt.
The step that matters
Let the brine cool before adding the hams. Hot brine can partly cook the surface of the meat and uneven temperatures can make curing unreliable. Cooling the brine fully lets the cure penetrate the meat evenly.
“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.
You might also like
Tomato Soup526 recipes
Brown Bread461 recipes
Mutton Broth292 recipes
Yorkshire Pudding264 recipesThe 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.