Name: Ham, Southern Style
Ingredients: 1 ham; 2 dozen whole cloves; brown sugar

Why it works: Ham and clove are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,666 recipes. Both carry gamma-decalactone, which smells peach, creamy. The science ↓

Ham, Southern Style

Ingredients

1 ham
2 dozen whole cloves
brown sugar

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

Boil the ham until tender, changing the water twice.
Remove the skin and place the ham in a baking pan.
Insert the whole cloves into the fat of the ham.

Glaze and bake

Sprinkle the ham with brown sugar.
Bake at 350°F (175°C) for 1 hour.

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.

Ham + clovetop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together1,666 recipes

Shared aroma: gamma-decalactone (peach, creamy).
Clove + sugartop 26% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together17,182 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).
Ham + sugartop 33% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together1,084 recipes

Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

Clove and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 17,182 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 meat, cooked first by boiling so it becomes tender before baking.
Whole cloves: Add aromatic flavour to the fat as the ham bakes.
Brown sugar: Sprinkled on top, it sweetens the surface and helps it caramelise and brown in the oven.