Ham is a cut of meat taken from the hind leg of a hog.

Ham can be bought fresh, but most host ham is sold already processed in some way. The salting, smoking and aging of pork was an invention of the Gauls and was an ancient European method of preserving backyard pigs that were slaughtered in the autumn and preserved for winter.

Ham can be dry-cured by coating it with salt -- as in the case of Italian prosciutto -- and may also be smoked like Spanish Serrano ham or Bayonne ham from France. It can be brined in a process called sweet-pickle curing (when sugar is added it's called sweet-cured) or injected with brine like the majority of mass-produced hams. So-called country-cured hams from the American south include Virginia's famous Smithfield ham.