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Recipe for Baked Ham

A ham baked with wine and sugar, basted with a wine-sugar mixture and cloves.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Wine and clove are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,958 recipes. Both carry cis-isoeugenol, which smells clove, spicy. The science ↓

Recipe for Baked Ham

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the ham

  1. Parboil the ham until tender enough to skin easily.

  2. Stick cloves all over the top about 1 inch apart.

  3. Mix the wine and sugar together.

Bake and serve

  1. Baste the ham repeatedly with the wine mixture while baking, using a few spoonfuls at a time.

  2. Bake for 2 to 3 hours.

  3. Let it cool.

  4. It is excellent for broiling.

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. Wine + clovetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,958 recipes

    Shared aroma: cis-isoeugenol (clove, spicy).

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

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

  3. Sugar + clovetop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together17,182 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

  4. Ham + winetop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together303 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  5. Wine + sugartop 31% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together9,581 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

Sugar and clove barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 17,182 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Ham
Forms the main body of the dish, providing the meat that is cooked and served.
Wine
Adds moisture and flavour to the glaze that is brushed over the ham during baking.
Sugar
Sweetens the basting mixture and helps the surface brown as it bakes.

The step that matters

Basting the ham with the wine mixture while it bakes. Basting a few spoonfuls at a time keeps the surface moist and lets the sugar in the glaze caramelise gradually without burning. Repeated basting builds a glossy, flavourful coat over the long bake.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (ham, wine, sugar):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Clovethe original
  3. Thymefits about as well
  4. Rosemaryfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against ham, wine, sugar. 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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