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Ham a LA Touraine

Ham cooked with butter, sugar, onion, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Ham a LA Touraine

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the ham

  1. Parboil the slice of ham, then pour off the water.

Cook

  1. In a frying pan, melt the butter and sprinkle the sugar over the ham.

  2. Chop the onion and fry it with the ham until golden brown.

  3. Remove the ham from the pan and add the cream to the onion.

  4. Let the mixture simmer, then pour it over the ham.

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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  3. Butter + oniontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

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

  5. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Ham
Provides the main savory meat that the sauce is served over.
Butter
Adds fat for frying and helps the sugar and ham brown.
Sugar
Sweetens the ham and promotes browning on its surface.
Onion
Softens and browns in the pan, adding savory sweetness to the sauce.
Cream
Forms the moist, rich sauce that coats the ham when simmered.

The step that matters

Let the mixture simmer, then pour it over the ham.. Simmering the cream with the browned onion lets it reduce and thicken slightly, so the sauce coats the ham rather than running off it.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Mustardfits about as well
  2. Leekfits about as well
  3. Potatofits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against ham, butter, sugar, cream. 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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