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Spanish Ham

A whole ham is boiled, then roasted with milk, sugar, salt, pepper, and cloves.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,451 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Spanish Ham

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the ham

  1. Boil the whole ham until cooked through.

  2. Place the ham in the oven and cover it with a soft dough or dredge it freely with flour.

Flavor and bake

  1. Stick cloves at intervals over the ham.

  2. Pour about 2 quarts of sweet milk into the roasting pan, adjusting if the ham is smaller.

  3. Add ¼ cup of brown sugar and season with coarse sea salt and black pepper.

  4. Baste the ham frequently with the liquid while it cooks.

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  2. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  4. Clove + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,671 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Milk + clovetop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,165 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

Milk and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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
The main cut, which is cooked through first and then finished in the oven.
Sweet milk
Forms the cooking liquid that keeps the ham moist and is spooned over it as it bakes.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the surface brown and caramelize in the oven.
Flour
Dredged over the ham to form a crust that helps seal in moisture and promote browning.
Cloves
Add a warm, aromatic spice flavor that infuses the surface of the ham.

The step that matters

Basting the ham frequently. Spooning the liquid over the ham keeps the surface from drying out. As the sugar in the liquid concentrates and caramelizes, it also builds color and a glazed, browned finish.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits about as well
  3. Cardamomfits about as well
  4. Clovethe original

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