Ham

Ham is pork from a leg cut that has been preserved by wet or dry curing, with or without smoking, and as a processed meat it covers both whole cuts and mechanically formed products made from the meat together with the curing agent, most often salt. Evidence of cured ham production reaches back to the Etruscan civilization in the sixth and fifth centuries BC, and the Roman writer Cato the Elder described ham curing methods around 160 BC, with an import trade in ham from Gaul recorded in Roman sources. The modern English word traces to an Old English term for the hollow or bend of the knee, from a Germanic root meaning crooked, and came to denote specifically the cut from a pig's hind leg by around the fifteenth century; ham is produced worldwide today, with many regions holding their own protected geographical designations.