Name: Boiled Ham
Ingredients: 1 ham; cold water; bread for crust

Why it works: Ham and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,536 recipes. Both carry 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline, which smells popcorn, roasted. The science ↓

Boiled Ham

Ingredients

1 ham
cold water
bread for crust

Directions

Prepare

Soak the ham in cold water overnight.
Scrape the ham clean.
Place the ham in a pot with cold water.

Boil and finish

Skim the water while boiling.
Let the ham simmer, adding cold water occasionally.
When done, remove the ham.
Carefully pull off the skin.
Cover the ham with grated bread crust.

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.

Ham + breadtop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,536 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Ham: Is the main protein, cooked gently in water until tender and fully cooked through.
Bread: Grated bread crust is sprinkled over the ham as a coating for texture and flavour.

“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.