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To Boil Ham

A ham is boiled in water with vinegar, optionally spiced with cloves, then garnished with celery tops or parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,668 recipes. Both carry gamma-decalactone, which smells peach, creamy. The science ↓

To Boil Ham

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

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

  2. If the ham is very salty, change the water after it begins to boil.

Boil

  1. Add 1 pint of vinegar to the water to enhance the flavor.

  2. Boil the ham until tender, then remove the skin and trim excess fat if desired.

Finish and serve

  1. Optionally, place the ham in a 350°F (175°C) oven for a short time.

  2. For presentation, stick cloves into the ham and garnish with celery tops or parsley.

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

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

  2. Vinegar + clovetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,386 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Vinegar + celerytop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,627 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Ham + clovetop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,666 recipes

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

  5. Ham + celerytop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,608 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Ham
Is the main cooked meat; boiling makes it tender and cooks it through.
Vinegar
Adds a sharp acidity that brightens the flavor of the cooking liquid and the ham.

Swap the clove

The recipe marks clove as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (ham, vinegar, celery):

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Thymefits about as well
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against ham, vinegar, celery. 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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