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Caroline Montague's Ham

A roasted ham flavored with cloves, brown sugar, and cider or sherry, finished with a breadcrumb topping.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Cider and sherry work together. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 143 recipes. Both carry ethyl pentanoate, which smells yeast, fruit. The science ↓

Caroline Montague's Ham

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the ham

  1. Soak the ham overnight, changing the water in the morning and soaking until noon.

  2. Boil the ham for 20 minutes per pound, changing the water once.

  3. In the second water, add enough to half cover the ham and 1 cup of cider or sherry.

  4. Remove the ham.

Glaze and bake

  1. Make incisions and insert 12 bruised cloves.

  2. Make a paste of brown sugar moistened with cider and pepper.

  3. Spread the paste on the ham.

  4. Bake the ham in a 400°F (200°C) oven for 15 minutes.

  5. Baste the ham with weak sherry or sweet cider.

  6. Remove the ham from the oven.

  7. Sprinkle lightly with bread crumbs.

  8. Bake for an additional 10 minutes.

  9. Serve as a roast.

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. Cider + sherrytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together143 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl pentanoate (yeast, fruit).

  2. Ham + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,536 recipes

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

  3. Clove + sherrytop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,237 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  4. Ham + sherrytop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together377 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-ethyl-2-methoxyphenol (smoky, clove).

  5. Cider + clovetop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,683 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

What each ingredient does

Hickory-cured ham
Provides the main meat, which is softened by soaking and boiling before roasting.
Cider or sherry
Adds acidity and fruity flavour to the cooking liquid and moistens the ham.
Brown sugar
Sweetens the paste and helps the surface brown and caramelise in the oven.
Bread crumbs
Form a light crust on the surface as the ham finishes baking.

The step that matters

Removing the salt by soaking and changing the water. Hickory-cured ham is very salty, and soaking it overnight and changing the water draws out salt. Skipping or shortening this soak can leave the finished ham too salty.

Swap the clove

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against ham, cider, sugar, sherry, bread. 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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