Why it works: Meat and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 19% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,777 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓
To Preserve Hams
Ingredients
Directions
Cure the meat
Mix saltpetre, brown sugar, salt, and butcher's pepper together.
Rub the meat with a damp cloth.
Thoroughly rub the mixture into the meat.
Repeat the application twice.
Lay the hams on a table or board for 2 weeks or longer, applying salt as needed.
Smoke and hang
Hang up the hams and smoke them.
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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Meat + peppertop 19% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together8,777 recipes
Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
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Sugar + peppertop 32% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together19,401 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
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Meat + sugartop 34% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together2,866 recipes
Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
Sugar and pepper barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 19,401 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Saltpetre
- Preserves the meat and helps give cured ham its pink colour and characteristic flavour.
- Salt
- Draws out moisture and slows bacterial growth, preserving the meat during curing.
- Brown sugar
- Balances the saltiness and adds mild sweetness to the cure.
The step that matters
Lay the hams for 2 weeks or longer, applying salt as needed. The cure needs enough time and salt to penetrate fully. Salt draws moisture out of the meat and makes it inhospitable to spoilage microbes, so stopping early or under-salting can leave the centre unpreserved.
“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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