Why it works: Ham and corn work together. They rank in the top 26% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 150 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-ol, which smells mushroom, earthy. The science ↓
To Cure Hams in a Cheap Manner
Ingredients
Directions
Cure
Lay the hams in tubs, flesh side up, and sprinkle salt on the fleshy part.
Let them drain for 24 hours, then rub off the salt and place them in a large tub.
Prepare a brine by dissolving 1 pound of salt and 3.5 ounces of saltpetre in 1 gallon of water.
Make enough brine to cover the hams, then boil it and skim off the scum.
While the brine is boiling hot, pour it over the hams.
Let the hams sit in the brine for 6 weeks, then remove and drain them.
Smoke and store
To smoke the hams, use corn cobs or sound hard wood with damp sawdust to create smoke.
Suspend the hams above the smoke for about 3 weeks until they are a good brown color.
Once smoked, dry the hams, sew cotton cloth over them, and whitewash the outside.
Alternatively, cover the hams with paper and bury them in ashes until needed.
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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Ham + corntop 26% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together150 recipes
Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Hams
- The main meat, which the cure and smoke preserve and colour.
- Coarse sea salt
- Draws moisture out of the meat and seasons it, slowing spoilage.
- Saltpetre
- Helps preserve the cured colour and slows bacterial spoilage during the long cure.
The step that matters
Keeping the brine hot when pouring it over the hams. Boiling the brine and pouring it while hot dissolves the salt and saltpetre fully and helps reduce microbes before the long cure begins.
“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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