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Baked Ham

A ham baked with a brown sugar and Seven-Up glaze, scored and clove-studded, cooked at 325°F.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Ham and clove are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,666 recipes. Both carry gamma-decalactone, which smells peach, creamy. The science ↓

Baked Ham

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the ham

  1. Remove the skin from the ham and score the fat in squares or diamonds.

  2. Stick whole cloves into each square or diamond.

  3. Combine ½ cup brown sugar with enough Seven-Up to make a thick paste and spread it over the scored side of the ham.

Bake and serve

  1. Place the ham in a large pan and pour remaining Seven-Up in the bottom of the pan, avoiding the ham.

  2. Cover the ham with a lid or aluminum foil and bake in a moderate oven at 325°F (175°C) for 15 minutes per pound.

  3. If the ham is very cold, add 5 more minutes per pound.

  4. Baste the ham two or three times while baking.

  5. About ½ hour before it's done, remove the cover to let the ham brown.

  6. Remove from the oven and let the ham cool completely before slicing.

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. Ham + clovetop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,666 recipes

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

  2. Clove + sugartop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together17,182 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

  3. Ham + sugartop 33% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,084 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

Clove and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 17,182 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Ham
Is the main cut being cooked, so its size sets the baking time.
Brown sugar
Forms a paste that sweetens the surface and helps it caramelize and brown.
Seven-up
Adds moisture and sweetness to the paste and the pan liquid as the ham bakes.
Whole cloves
Add a warm, aromatic spice flavor to the scored fat surface.

The step that matters

Remove the cover about ½ hour before it's done. Covered baking traps steam and keeps the surface pale and moist. Uncovering exposes the sugar glaze to dry oven heat, which lets it caramelize and brown.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Clovethe original
  3. Nutmegfits about as well
  4. Allspicefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against ham, sugar. 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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