Skip to main content
Baking

Baked Ham

A ham coated in a flour paste and baked until the crust forms and the skin peels off.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Flour and buttermilk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,721 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Baked Ham

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the ham

  1. Make a thick paste of flour and cover the ham with it, bone and all.

  2. Place the ham in a pan on top of 1 or 2 pieces of wire to keep it an inch above the bottom.

Bake

  1. Bake in a hot oven at 400°F (200°C).

  2. Cook for 15 minutes per pound for a small ham, or 20 minutes per pound for a large ham.

  3. Place the ham skin side down in the pan.

  4. The paste will form a hard crust around the ham, allowing the skin to come off easily.

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. Flour + buttermilktop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,721 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Sugar + buttermilktop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,973 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  4. Flour + clovetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,671 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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

Flour
Forms a thick paste that bakes into a hard crust sealing in moisture around the ham.
Ham
The main cut being cooked, protected by the paste as it heats through in the oven.

The step that matters

Covering the ham with a thick flour paste. A thick paste dries in the oven into a hard, insulating shell that holds moisture in and protects the meat. If the paste is thin or patchy, the crust will not form properly and the skin may not peel off cleanly.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Jalapenofits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against ham, flour, egg, sugar, buttermilk. 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.

More baked ham recipes

with Apples 3 See all 159 →

You might also like

Delicate CakeDelicate Cake246 recipesBoiled FrostingBoiled Frosting69 recipesCitron CakeCitron Cake68 recipesScotch CakeScotch Cake63 recipes