ABSTRACT
The origin of dry-cured ham is lost in ancient times when man used salting as a useful preservation tool for times of scarcity. The evolution of this product has followed a traditional route, with oral transmission from generation to generation over the centuries, but very empirically, with a rather poor knowledge of the process technology (Toldrá 1992). It was just in the latest decades of the twentieth century when rapid advances in the scienti…c knowledge of chemistry, biochemistry, and microbiology involved in the process were reached (Toldrá 2002). This knowledge prompted successful developments in technology and a signi…cant progress in quality standardization.
