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Baking

To Cook a Ham

A method for cooking a ham by soaking, boiling, skinning, crumb coating, and baking.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 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 ↓

To Cook a Ham

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Simmer

  1. Soak the ham overnight in plenty of water if it is old or hard.

  2. Place the ham in a pot of cold water and bring it to a gentle boil or simmer.

  3. Cook for 15 minutes for each pound of the ham.

Finish and bake

  1. Remove the ham from the pot and take off the skin.

  2. Dust the ham generously with bread crumbs.

  3. Bake in the oven at 400°F (200°C) for 15 to 30 minutes.

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).

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

What each ingredient does

Ham
The main cut of meat, which is cooked gently in water to become tender and moist.
Bread crumbs
Form a coating on the surface that browns and crisps in the oven.

The step that matters

Simmer gently, do not boil hard. A gentle simmer cooks the ham evenly. A hard, rolling boil toughens the meat proteins and can make the outer layers dry and stringy before the centre is cooked.

“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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