Why it works: Ham and vinegar work together. They rank in the top 22% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 737 recipes. Both carry 3-methylbutanol, which smells malty, whiskey. The science ↓
Boil Four Pounds Ham
Ingredients
Directions
Place the ham in a pot with cold water at 9 o'clock.
Change the water every hour.
When you change the water at 11 o'clock, add 1 tablespoon of vinegar.
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.
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Ham + vinegartop 22% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together737 recipes
Shared aroma: 3-methylbutanol (malty, whiskey).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Ham
- The main meat, which becomes tender as it cooks slowly in water.
“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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