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Barbecued Ham

A ham slice simmered in butter, ketchup, and wine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Tomato and wine are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,759 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Barbecued Ham

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. In a dish, combine the butter, tomato ketchup, and wine.

  2. Heat the mixture until boiling.

Heat and serve

  1. Add the slice of boiled ham and heat until boiling hot.

  2. Serve immediately.

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. Tomato + winetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,759 recipes

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

  2. Butter + winetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,645 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  3. Butter + hamtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,475 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  4. Butter + tomatotop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,918 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  5. Tomato + ketchuptop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together754 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Adds fat and richness, helping the sauce coat the ham and feel smooth.
Tomato ketchup
Adds sweetness, acidity and tomato flavour, forming the base of the barbecue sauce.
Wine
Adds acidity and depth of flavour that balances the sweet ketchup.

The step that matters

Heating the ham in the sauce. Ham is already cooked, so it only needs to warm through. Holding it at a hard boil for too long can toughen the meat and dry it out, so heat it just until hot.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Shallotfits about as well
  2. Tomatothe original
  3. Onionfits about as well
  4. Mustardfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, ketchup, wine, ham. 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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