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Venison Hams

Venison hams cured with salt, sugar, saltpetre, bran, and smoked over hickory, then packed in wood ashes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Venison and ham work together. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 85 recipes. Both carry 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline, which smells popcorn, roasted. The science ↓

Venison Hams

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Use freshly killed venison hams.

  2. Mix equal parts of coarse sea salt and brown sugar, and rub it into the hams.

Cure

  1. Place the hams in a tub and let them sit for seven days, turning and rubbing them daily with the salt and sugar mixture.

  2. Combine saltpetre and common salt in a ratio of 2 ounces of saltpetre to a handful of salt, rub this mixture into the hams, and let them sit for another week.

Smoke and serve

  1. Wipe the hams, rub them with bran, and smoke them for two weeks over hickory wood.

  2. Pack the hams in wood ashes.

  3. Serve the venison ham sliced or shredded, similar to dried beef.

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.

  1. Venison + hamtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  2. Ham + sugartop 33% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,084 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Venison + sugartop 33% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together186 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Venison hams
The main meat, which becomes firm and sliceable as it cures and dries.
Coarse sea salt
Draws moisture out of the meat and helps preserve it during curing.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and softens the harshness of the salt in the cure.
Saltpetre
Helps preserve the meat and gives the cured meat its characteristic pink color.
Hickory wood
Provides the smoky aroma and flavor absorbed during smoking.

The step that matters

Turning and rubbing the hams daily during the first cure. Salt and sugar penetrate meat slowly by diffusion, so uneven contact leaves thick areas under-cured. Daily turning spreads the cure evenly, which helps the whole ham preserve reliably.

“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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