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Baked Ham

A ham baked with a thin batter, sugar, pepper, powdered crackers, cloves, and cinnamon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Baked Ham

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the ham in water for 1 hour, then scrape and wipe it clean.

  2. Spread a thin batter over the ham.

  3. Place the ham in a deep dish on sticks to keep it out of the gravy.

Bake and finish

  1. Bake for 6 to 8 hours.

  2. Remove the skin and batter, then sprinkle with sugar, black pepper, and powdered crackers.

  3. Return to the oven to brown.

  4. Stick cloves into the ham and dust with cinnamon.

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. Clove + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Pepper + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,890 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  4. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Ham + clovetop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,666 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-decalactone (peach, creamy).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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
Is the main cut of meat that is cooked slowly until tender.
Thin batter
Forms a protective coating over the ham during the long bake, helping keep it moist.
Sugar
Caramelizes on the surface when returned to the oven, adding sweetness and browning.
Powdered crackers
Combine with sugar and pepper on the surface to form a crust that browns.

The step that matters

Returning the ham to the oven to brown. Sugar and cracker crumbs need dry, direct heat to caramelize and form a browned crust. If the ham is left too long or the surface stays wet, the coating can burn or stay pale and soggy.

Swap the cinnamon

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

  1. Cinnamonthe original
  2. Allspicefits about as well
  3. Nutmegfits less well
  4. Marjoramfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against ham, sugar, pepper, clove. 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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