Skip to main content
Main

Baked Ham

A slice of raw ham baked with tomatoes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Flour and tomato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 22% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,065 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Baked Ham

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 300°F (150°C).

  2. Dust both sides of the ham slice with flour.

  3. Place the ham in a baking pan.

Bake

  1. Pour cooked tomatoes around the ham to match its depth.

  2. Bake slowly for at least 2½ hours.

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. Flour + tomatotop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,065 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Ham + tomatotop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together348 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  3. Ham + flourtop 33% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

What each ingredient does

Raw ham
Main protein; slow cooking softens its connective tissue and cooks it through.
Flour
Thin dusting that helps the surface brown during baking.
Cooked tomatoes
Adds moisture, acidity and flavor around the ham during the long bake.

The step that matters

Bake slowly for at least 2½ hours. Low, slow heat lets the ham's connective tissue soften and the meat cook through evenly without drying out. Stopping early leaves it tough, and higher heat dries the outer layer.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Arrowrootfits better
  3. Okrafits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against ham, flour. 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.

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesCream of Tomato SoupCream of Tomato Soup107 recipesTomato BisqueTomato Bisque61 recipesCream Tomato SoupCream Tomato Soup28 recipes