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Boiled Ham

A ham boiled and then baked with sugar, cracker crumbs, and cloves.

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 ↓

Boiled Ham

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a slow oven”. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Soak the ham in cold water for several hours or overnight.

  2. Wash the ham thoroughly and trim off the hard skin near the end of the bone.

Boil

  1. Place the ham in a kettle and cover it with cold water.

  2. Heat to boiling point and cook slowly until tender (4 to 5 hours).

  3. Remove the kettle from the heat and let the ham cool partially.

Glaze and bake

  1. Take the ham from the water, remove the outside skin, and sprinkle with sugar and cracker crumbs.

  2. Stick cloves into the ham one-half inch apart.

  3. Bake in a slow oven at 300°F (150°C) for one hour, basting with drippings.

Serve

  1. Serve cold, thinly sliced.

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. Sugar + clovetop 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).

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
Is the main cut that is softened by long slow cooking and then baked.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the surface brown during baking.
Sifted cracker crumbs
Coat the surface and help form a crust as the ham bakes.

The step that matters

Cook slowly until tender. Keeping the water just under a hard boil lets connective tissue break down gently, so the ham turns tender without the outside toughening or falling apart.

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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