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Potted Ham

A preserved ham mixture flavored with mustard, cayenne, garlic, and butter, baked and topped with melted butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Potted Ham

Why it works: Mustard and garlic match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,053 recipes. Both carry linalool, which smells floral, citrus. The science ↓

Potted Ham

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the ham

  1. Remove all meat, fat, and lean from the boiled ham and chop it very finely.

  2. Pound the chopped ham to a paste.

Season and pot

  1. For each pint of paste, mix in 1 teaspoon of mustard, a pinch of cayenne pepper, a little garlic, and 1 tablespoon of butter if the mixture is not fatty enough.

  2. Pack the mixture into a small earthen jar and cover the top with paper before placing the lid on.

Bake and store

  1. Place the jar in a baking pan filled with hot water and bake at 300°F (150°C) for 2 hours.

  2. Once cooled, remove the cover and pour melted butter over the top.

  3. Cover again and store in a cool place.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Mustard + garlictop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  2. Pepper + garlictop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,090 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Mustard + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

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

  4. Ham + mustardtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together747 recipes

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

  5. Ham + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,475 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Boiled ham
Provides the meat that is pounded into the paste and forms the body of the dish.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, keeping the paste moist and smooth; melted butter on top seals the surface.
Mustard
Adds sharp, pungent flavor that balances the richness of the ham and fat.

The step that matters

Baking in a water bath. Baking the jar in hot water heats the paste gently so it cooks evenly without drying or curdling at the edges. Too much direct heat can make the texture grainy and dry.

Swap the garlic

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

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Garlicthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against ham, mustard, pepper, butter. 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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