Name: How to Cook Ham
Ingredients: 1 good sized ham; lukewarm water

How to Cook Ham

Ingredients

1 good sized ham
lukewarm water

Directions

Place the ham in a pot and cover it with lukewarm water.
Cover the pot tightly to minimize steam escape.
Boil the ham for 4 to 5 hours for a 16-pound ham.
Let the ham sit in the water until it cools.
If cooked at night, leave it in the pot until morning.

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

What each ingredient does

Ham: Is the main cut being cooked, so its size sets how long the boil needs to run.
Lukewarm water: Surrounds the ham and carries heat evenly into it during the boil.

“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.