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Decorated Ham

A smoked ham decorated with lard, jelly, laurel leaves, lemon slices, and a paper cuff.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Laurel and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,239 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Decorated Ham

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the ham

  1. Cook the ham.

  2. Let it cool.

  3. Trim the ham nicely around the edges.

  4. Uncover the bone.

Decorate

  1. Cut small squares into the skin at the front end, evenly spaced from the edge.

  2. Fill the squares with white lard. Smooth it with a knife.

  3. Carve a small statue or star from the jelly.

  4. Mash additional jelly to create a diamond-like texture. Place it around the star.

  5. Create a border with laurel and lemon around the star.

  6. Use lard to make decorative patterns on the skin.

  7. Wrap a paper cuff around the bone.

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. Laurel + lemontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,239 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Ham + laureltop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together609 recipes

    Shared aroma: anethole (sweet, anise).

  3. Ham + lemontop 29% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,788 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Fresh smoked ham
Forms the main body of the dish and carries all the decoration.
White lard
Fills the scored squares and patterns, giving contrasting white color and a soft, fatty finish on the skin.
Jelly
Sets firm to hold the carved star and mashed decorative texture in place.

The step that matters

Let it cool. Carving lard or jelly onto a warm ham makes both soften and slide, so the decorations lose their shape. Letting the ham cool fully lets the fat and gelatin firm up, so the cuts and patterns hold.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (ham, laurel):

  1. Red currantfits about as well
  2. Lemonthe original
  3. Orangefits less well
  4. Applefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against ham, laurel. 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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