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Cold Boiled Ham

A ham boiled with mace, cloves, and bay leaf, then cooled, coated with egg and breadcrumbs, and baked until browned.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,768 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Cold Boiled Ham

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare and boil

  1. Wash the ham thoroughly.

  2. Place it in a large kettle of cold water with mace, cloves, and bay leaf.

  3. Boil slowly for at least 2 hours until tender.

  4. Let it cool in the cooking liquid.

Coat and brown

  1. Once cool, remove the rind.

  2. Cover the ham with beaten egg and bread crumbs.

  3. Brown in a hot oven at 400°F (200°C).

Serve

  1. Serve cold and garnish with 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. Clove + parsleytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,768 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Mace + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  3. Ham + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  4. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  5. Mace + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,268 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

What each ingredient does

Ham
Provides the main meat; slow simmering in liquid keeps it tender and moist.
Beaten egg
Binds the bread crumbs to the surface so the coating holds during browning.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp, golden crust when baked in the hot oven.

The step that matters

Boil slowly, not hard. A gentle simmer cooks the ham evenly and keeps the meat tender and moist. A rapid boil toughens the outer layers and can leave the centre undercooked.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (ham, clove, egg, bread, parsley):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Marjoramfits better
  3. Allspicefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against ham, clove, egg, bread, 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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