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Boiled Ham

A boiled ham seasoned with onions, carrots, celery, cloves, peppercorns, bay leaves, brown sugar, and topped with breadcrumbs before baking.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Boiled Ham

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the ham

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

  2. Wash the ham thoroughly.

  3. Trim off the hard skin near the end of the bone.

Boil

  1. Place the ham in a kettle with the onion, carrot, celery, and spices.

  2. Cover the ham with cold water.

  3. Heat the water to boiling.

  4. Skim off foam.

  5. Cook the ham slowly until tender (about 5 hours or 1 hour per pound).

  6. Remove the ham from the stove.

  7. Let the ham cool in the brine.

Glaze and bake

  1. Take the ham out of the water.

  2. Remove the skin from the ham.

  3. Place the ham in a dripping pan.

  4. Sprinkle the ham with brown sugar.

  5. Cover the ham with a thick layer of bread crumbs.

  6. Insert cloves ½ inch apart into the ham.

  7. Place the ham in the oven to brown for about 1 hour.

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. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Clove + carrottop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  3. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

  4. Clove + celerytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,668 recipes

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

  5. Onion + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Ham
Provides the main body of meat, which becomes tender through long, slow simmering.
Brown sugar
Melts and caramelizes on the surface, adding sweetness and browning to the glaze.
Rye bread crumbs
Form a crust over the ham that toasts and browns in the oven.
Onion
Adds aroma and savory flavor to the cooking liquid that seasons the ham.

The step that matters

Cook the ham slowly until tender. Keeping the water just below a hard boil lets connective tissue break down gently, so the ham turns tender instead of tough and stringy.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Parsnipfits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against ham, clove, carrot, celery, sugar, rye, 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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