Skip to main content
Main

Ham Sauce

A sauce made from ham gravy, flour, butter, spices, water, and beer, simmered and strained.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Flour and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Ham Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the ham

  1. Preserve the gravy that runs from the ham when cut at the table.

  2. Bruise the remaining pieces of ham to break the fibers and release their juice.

  3. Put the pieces into a saucepan and let them sweat over low heat.

Make the sauce

  1. Sprinkle flour over the ham and stir continuously.

  2. Moisten the mixture with water and small beer.

  3. Season with Jamaica pepper, black pepper, and sweet herbs.

  4. Let the sauce simmer gently.

  5. If the sauce is not thick enough, add butter and more flour.

  6. Warm the sauce together.

  7. Strain the sauce.

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 + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Butter + beertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together680 recipes

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

  3. Flour + beertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together781 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  5. Pepper + beertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together940 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Ham
Provides the meaty flavor and juice that form the base of the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the liquid as it cooks, giving the sauce body.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, helping to thicken and smooth the sauce.
Small beer
Adds liquid and a light, slightly tangy flavor to the sauce.

The step that matters

Adding flour to the ham. Stirring flour into the sweated ham and juices while they are hot lets it coat the pieces and cook out its raw taste. Stirring continuously prevents lumps, so the liquid added later thickens evenly into a smooth sauce.

“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 ham sauce recipes

Grated 3 See all 15 →

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesYorkshire PuddingYorkshire Pudding264 recipes