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To Boil Ham

A large ham is boiled slowly, then coated with pepper and crackers, optionally garnished with horseradish and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

To Boil Ham

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and soak

  1. The day before cooking, scrape, wash, and dry the ham, then place it in the sun.

  2. Soak the ham in water overnight.

Boil and cool

  1. In the morning, place the ham skin-side down in a pot of cold water and boil slowly for five hours (or six for a large ham).

  2. Once tender, let the ham cool in the cooking liquid.

Finish and serve

  1. Remove the skin, sprinkle with black pepper, and coat with browned, pounded crackers.

  2. For special occasions, decorate with scraped horseradish and curled parsley.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Horseradish + parsleytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together562 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Pepper + horseradishtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,646 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Ham + peppertop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Ham + parsleytop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,249 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Ham
The main cut of meat, which becomes tender through long, slow simmering in water.
Crackers
Browned and pounded, they form a crisp, toasty crumb coating that adds texture and savory flavor.

The step that matters

Simmer slowly for the full time. Gentle simmering lets the connective tissue in the ham break down gradually, leaving it tender and moist. Boiling it hard tightens and toughens the meat fibers and can dry it out.

Swap the horseradish

The recipe marks horseradish as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (ham, pepper, parsley):

  1. Carrotfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Horseradishthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against ham, pepper, parsley. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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