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Baked Ham with Vinegar Sauce

A ham shank baked with a vinegar sauce and seasoned with cloves, pepper, and celery salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,451 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Baked Ham with Vinegar Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash the ham shank thoroughly and trim if necessary.

  2. Rub the cloves, pepper, and celery salt into the meat.

  3. Combine the flour and water to make a paste and spread it over the meat.

Roast

  1. Fill the pan halfway with cider or water and add the vinegar.

  2. Roast for two to three hours.

  3. Remove the paste and skin from the ham.

Serve

  1. Serve the ham on a platter with vegetables such as beets, sweet potatoes, spinach, cabbage, and carrots.

  2. Serve with apple sauce made with vinegar or lemon juice.

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 + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  2. Pepper + celerytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

  3. Clove + celerytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,668 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-decalactone (peach, creamy).

  4. Cider + vinegartop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,431 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-ethyl-2-methoxyphenol (smoky, clove).

  5. Pepper + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Forms a paste that shields the meat and helps keep it moist while roasting.
Cider or water
Provides liquid in the pan that keeps the ham moist as it roasts.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that gives the pan liquid and sauce a sharp, tangy flavor.
Cloves
Adds warm, aromatic spice flavor to the meat.

The step that matters

Roast for two to three hours. Long, gentle roasting lets the connective tissue in the shank soften and the meat become tender. Too little time leaves it tough, while the moisture in the pan helps prevent the meat from drying out.

Swap the celery

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (ham, clove, pepper, flour, cider, vinegar):

  1. Allspicefits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Cinnamonfits better
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against ham, clove, pepper, flour, cider, vinegar. 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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