I read somewhere that ham was important to ancient Europeans since it allowed them to have protein stores over the winter. Not only is ham tasty, it allows pork to last for months. With those important benefits, why aren’t other kinds of meats treated in the same way to create ham-like products for those meats? Why isn’t there beef ham, sheep ham, goat ham, chicken ham, etc. Those meats can be preserved, but it seems like it’s more done through something like salt (corned beef) or drying (jerky). Why don’t people do the same process as ham to those meats as well?
Pork is preserved by making it into ham. Why aren't other kinds of meats preserved in that same way?
There is, right?
I think there are many other examples too.
But ham is preserved by using salt?
Also, ham is made form just one part of the pig, not the whole thing. Even preserved the same way, different parts of different animals are going to have a different taste and texture.
Ham is just the name for pork from a leg cut that has been preserved by wet or dry curing. So, it is the curing process that preserves the pork. I’m not seeing how this makes it markedly different from the other processes for preserving meat.
I guess I’m wondering why there aren’t things like beef roasts processed the same way. Why isn’t there canned “beef hams”? Why isn’t there a beef prosciutto? Ham and prosciutto made from pork is delicious. I’d much rather spend the winter eating that than dry, beef jerky or dried chicken jerky. I’d rather have ham on a long journey ship journey than jerky. It seems like pork has this great way to be preserved that we eat on a regular basis because it’s delicious (e.g. ham sandwiches) that we don’t see in other meats.
What is Corned Beef?
I thought that was basically the same idea as ham but with beef?
Indeed, it’s made from the ham, hence the name.
We eat turkey ham. given the choice between “ham salad” and “turkey ham salad”, I prefer the turkey product.
There’s pastirma/basturma from the Turkey to Armenia-ish region.
How do you think ham is made? Ham is made by variously salting, drying and/or smoking. All of which are also used for other animal meats.
The curing process is basically a sort of extended salting which changes the protein structure of the meat some. It also preserves the meat.
Pork is commonly cured, but what makes it “ham” is that it’s a cured back leg. If it’s the belly, it’s pancetta or bacon, if it’s the back, it’s back bacon, if it’s the shoulder, it’s capicola. If it’s cured and dried, but not cooked, it’s prosciutto or jamon iberico. And so forth… the Europeans have been at that for a while.
Other meats are cured as well- if you cure a beef brisket, it’s corned beef. If you cure it and then smoke it, you have pastrami.
Most sausages are cured in some fashion as well- some are dried, some are smoked, some are dried and smoked, etc…
If you cure beef and dry it, you end up with pastirma, bresaola, jerky, biltong,
There’s a butcher shop near me that cures their own beef bacon. It’s wonderful stuff, though very rich.
Ham can be naturally cured by limiting the amount of salt used and allowing natural bacteria to grow. Following a period of curing it may be further dried, salted, and/or smoked. Smoking not only adds delicious flavor but also prevents insect infestation. Beef doesn’t naturally cure that easily but dry aging is an example of partial curing for flavor. After that it can be dry salted or brined for preservation.
In Spain there is cecina:
I Swizzerland there is Bündnerfleisch:
And in the Eastern Mediterranean there is pastirma:
So I believe your premise is not entirely correct. And there are others, of course.
Fancy some pemmican?
Not to mention all those dried and smoked fishes.
Is there a reason that ham seems to have a much greater share of the preserved market than these similarly-prepared meats? If I was a European preparing for winter, I would suspect I would prepare all my meats this way regardless of which animal they came from. Yet ham seems to be the clear winner both for the purpose of long-preservation as well as just eating in general. Some of these other kinds of preserved meats I have barely heard of while ham is readily available just about everywhere. Perhaps in the modern day with modern farm production we can be picky about our meats, but I would think ancient Europeans wouldn’t have that luxury. They’d have to preserve what they had around and wouldn’t necessarily be able to get enough pork to meet their protein needs.
I’m not sure if this is done historically, but my daughter brought home smoked turkey a coupld of Thanks Givings ago. We called it ‘Hurkey’ because it tasted like ham. We weren’t fans. If we’d wanted ham we would have had ham. She brought it home from and in-laws dinner as left overs.
/Cracks knuckles and gets settled in
As a medieval recreationist who dealt mainly in food, let me point out one of the common sources for Roman cooking was De Re Coquinaria - but foods were also mentioned in poems/histories [we won’t get into styles of historical writing, but histories were not simply dry recitation of facts but also tended to be more like scandal articles in the NY Post] From Apicius:
To keep meats fresh without salt for any length of time
Cover fresh meat with honey, suspend it in a vessel. Use as needed; in winter it will keep but in summer it will last only a few days. Cooked meat may be treated likewise.
So obviously they knew about salting meat, and had an alternative that was usable in winter but not summer, it appears to me they salted meats for summer.
61 Lucanian Sausage
Lucanicae
Lucanian sausage or meat pudding are made similar to the above: crush pepper, cumin, savory, rue, parsley, condiment, laurel berries and broth; mix with finely chopped fresh Pork and pound well with broth. To this mixture, being rich, add whole pepper and nuts. When filling casings carefully push the meat through. Hang sausage up to smoke.
So obviously they used smoking to preserve certain [probably not all forms] of sausages.
- Unfortunately one of the best online resources for ancient, medieval, rennaissance and middle eastern cooking is currently offline [the site owner passed recently and it appears the server had issues today] is Stefans Florelegium - he kept an online compendium of usenet, email and online posts of a number of groups, including the Ansteorran Cooks List - however Cariadoc’s MIscellaney lists the recipe for Lords Salt, for preserving meats.
[Unfortunately my copy of Soup for the Qan us currently at our other address so I can’t comment on Chinese/Mongolian preservation methods off the top of my head and I don’t want to mislead people.]
That’s the thing, innit?
I mean, ham is ubiquitous in American delis. So that’s what you see, and you think that your perception is how it is.
It isn’t.
Of course, lots of different cuts from different animals were preserved in different ways. You don’t actually think that people on a 19th century farm in Greece or Hungary chopped off the ham part of the pig, cured it and threw away the rest?
To some extent, that depends on where you live and where you are shopping. I can easily buy pastrami, corned beef, bresaola, pancetta ,capicola , prosciutto and a variety of German dried sausages including landjäger and cervelat ( both made from a mixture of beef and pork).
On the other hand, I don’t think I ever saw a package of Oscar Meyer type cold cuts until I was an adult - I never buy cold cuts or most sausages at the large, chain supermarkets.
Except for packages of Oscar Mayer bologna I don’t recall much in the way of pre-packaged cold cuts in the 60s. After a while variety packs, salami and thin slices ham were abundant and then just about everything after that.