Talk:Gammon (meat)

(Comment)
I'm really not very happy with this article (or the one on Ham). It says that gammon is distinguished from ham in that gammon is cooked; well, what is one to make of cooked ham, then?

From what I've been able to tell, both gammon and ham are cured leg of pork (specifically the hind leg). This article mentions nothing about curing.

And ham is cooked (or dry-cured, so it's ready to eat). Most ham in the english-speaking world is cooked ham, and this is an english encyclopaedia. Gammon, on the other hand, is cured, but not ready to eat.

And I don't see any relevance, in such a short article, in mentioning what one might do with pork that isn't ham or gammon, i.e. is uncured - even if one of the things you could do with it is make a meatloaf that also includes bits of ham. Especially since ham is not the subject of this article.

Proposed text:

>snip<

Gammon is cured leg of pork, specifically the hind leg. Curing consists of soaking in a brine consisting of salt and sometimes sodium nitrite. The gammon may or may not be smoked after curing is complete. If the curing process also involves air-drying so that the meat can be stored at room temperature and eaten uncooked, that is dry-cured ham, and not gammon. And if the cured gammon is cooked as an entire joint, it becomes a ham.

Gammon can be cooked in other ways, such as in the form of gammon steaks; these are not referred to as ham.

The term "gammon" is derived from the french word jambon, which means ham, and is derived from the french word for leg: jambe.

>snip<

It may be that americans refer to all forms of cured leg of pork as "ham"; I couldn't say, I'm UKian. But I think the article as it stands is specifically wrong in saying that ham is raw and gammon is cooked; in the UK at least, the opposite is the case - if you wish to serve home-baked ham, you must buy a gammon joint, and cook it - the gammon is sold uncooked. Ham is always sold either ready-cooked, or dry-cured - either way, ready to eat.

MrDemeanour (talk) 16:48, 25 December 2013 (UTC)

OK, so I rewrote it. I didn't use the proposed text above. I found new citations, because I couldn't find text in the old cites that properly explained how ham, gammon and bacon are related.

MrDemeanour (talk) 12:08, 28 December 2013 (UTC)


 * I'm American... "ham" is certainly NOT always sold pre-cooked. True that nowadays few people want to buy smoked ham raw, as cooking it is laborious... but a raw one may be had. "Fresh ham" means a raw, unsmoked leg cut of pork.
 * And the only other cut allowed to be called "ham" is "picnic ham", raw, cooked, smoked or not, which comes from the shoulder. And none of this has to do with gammon... which we don't have in the US. 70.36.130.133 (talk) 21:53, 30 August 2015 (UTC)

"Gammon" in the Waste Land
The lower class women serve it to Albert, back from the Great War, at the end of the pub scene. They consider it pretty grand. Plainly it's meant as a class marker of some kind, at least at the time. Profhum (talk) 07:18, 30 April 2016 (UTC)

"It differs from ham in that ham is cured after being cut from the carcass..."
Am I to understand that gammon is cured BEFORE being cut from the carcass? That seems unlikely, so what is this sentence trying to tell me? The linked source is also unhelpful and doesn't support the statement. The only clear distinguishing feature the source states is that gammon is more lightly cured than ham.
 * Yes, historically at least, the whole side of the pig would be cured, and then cuts taken from that. Bacon (and back bacon) would be taken from the belly and loin respectively, while the hind quarter would be a gammon of ham depending on the exact cut, and whether it was smoked. Nowadays it does seem that the term is more the difference between ready-to-eat vs needs additional cooking than anything else, though. oknazevad (talk) 16:00, 9 September 2018 (UTC)

German nouns are spelt with a capital letter
German nouns (including compound nouns) are spelt with a capital letter, so Beinschinken, not beinschinken. (Literally "leg ham"; Bein = leg, Schinken = ham). See: https://www.chefkoch.de/forum/2,1,8862/Beinschinken.html where you can see that it's spelt with a capital letter regardless of where it appears in a sentence.

Often German nouns are spelt without a capital letter in English (e.g. bratwurst vs Bratwurst), but I feel the article should either use German capitalization or at least point out that such words are spelt with a capital letter in German. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 95.146.53.45 (talk) 18:14, 24 November 2018 (UTC)

"Glazed ham" listed at Redirects for discussion
The redirect [//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Glazed_ham&redirect=no Glazed ham] has been listed at redirects for discussion to determine whether its use and function meets the redirect guidelines. Readers of this page are welcome to comment on this redirect at  until a consensus is reached. Steel1943 (talk) 23:07, 13 February 2024 (UTC)