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Baked Ham with Potatoes

A baked dish of sliced ham and potatoes, layered with butter, milk, pepper, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Baked Ham with Potatoes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Bring ham to a boil and drain.

  2. Butter a baking dish and lay ham slices on the bottom.

Layer and bake

  1. Fill with sliced potatoes, dot with butter, and season with pepper and salt.

  2. Add milk to fill the dish three-quarters full.

  3. Bake until potatoes are tender.

  4. Place ham on top and bake until 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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Potato + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Potato + milktop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

  4. Potato + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,456 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  5. Ham + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,475 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

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

What each ingredient does

Raw ham
Provides the meat base and savoury flavour that the dish is built around.
Potatoes
Form the bulk of the dish and turn tender and soft as they bake in the milk.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, helping the top brown and the flavour carry through the dish.
Milk
Provides liquid that cooks the potatoes and forms a creamy, savoury sauce as it bakes.

The step that matters

Baking until the potatoes are tender before adding the ham. Potatoes need a long, steady bake to soften through, while the ham is only added afterward so it can brown on top without drying out.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Potatothe original
  2. Capsicumfits about as well
  3. Asparagusfits less well
  4. Tomatofits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against ham, butter, pepper, milk. 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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