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Ham, Cured

A pork leg cured with salt, saltpetre, wine, spices, then smoked and wrapped.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Thyme and sage match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,485 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Ham, Cured

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the pork

  1. Shorten the leg of pork as much as possible.

  2. Place a weight on the shortened leg for a few hours.

  3. Rub the pork all over with ½ pound of coarse sea salt and 1 ounce of saltpetre.

Brine and cure

  1. Boil together ½ cup of wine and ½ cup of water with juniper berries, thyme, basil, sage, bay leaves, whole peppercorns, and coriander seeds until well flavored.

  2. Strain the mixture.

  3. Pour the strained mixture over the ham in a pan.

  4. Sprinkle additional salt on top.

  5. Leave the ham for three weeks.

  6. Turn the ham daily.

Dry, smoke and store

  1. Dry the ham.

  2. Smoke the ham with aromatic wood.

  3. Rub the ham with wine lees.

  4. Dry the ham again.

  5. Wrap the ham in paper.

  6. Store the wrapped ham in wood ashes.

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. Thyme + sagetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,485 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Thyme + basiltop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,768 recipes

    Shared aroma: terpineol (pine, woody).

  3. Basil + sagetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together223 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  4. Basil + coriandertop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together520 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  5. Thyme + coriandertop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together427 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

What each ingredient does

Coarse sea salt
Draws out moisture and seasons the pork, helping preserve the meat during curing.
Saltpetre
Helps preserve the meat and gives the cured ham its characteristic colour.
Leg of pork
Forms the ham itself; its size and fat determine how the cure penetrates.
Wine
Adds acidity and flavour to the brine, carrying the aromatics into the meat.

The step that matters

Rubbing the pork with salt and saltpetre. The cure must coat the whole leg evenly. Uneven salting lets bacteria survive in thin or missed areas, so the ham can spoil or cure unevenly.

Swap the coriander

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pork, wine, thyme, basil, sage):

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Rosemaryfits better
  3. Oreganofits better
  4. Corianderthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, wine, thyme, basil, sage. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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