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Baked Ham

A ham baked after boiling, coated with brown sugar, cloves, paprika, and bread crumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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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 ↓

Baked Ham

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the ham

  1. Boil the ham slowly for about 4 hours.

  2. Remove the skin and rub in brown sugar until it is well coated.

  3. Insert cloves into the ham and season with paprika.

  4. Sprinkle thickly with bread crumbs.

Bake

  1. Place in the oven and baste with the water used for boiling.

  2. Bake for about 35 minutes or until well browned.

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

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

  2. Clove + breadtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,129 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

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

  4. Sugar + clovetop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together17,182 recipes

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

  5. Sugar + breadtop 32% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,638 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Sugar and clove 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
Forms the main body of the dish and carries the flavour of the other ingredients.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the surface brown during baking.
Cloves
Adds a warm, aromatic flavour to the ham.
Paprika
Adds colour and a mild, earthy flavour to the surface.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp, browned crust on the outside of the ham.

The step that matters

Bake until well browned. The sugar and bread crumbs brown at the surface only as the heat works through, so judge by colour as well as the stated time. Underbaking leaves the crust pale and soft, while overbaking can scorch the sugar.

Swap the clove

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against ham, sugar, bread. 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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