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Barbecued Ham

Barbecued Ham is thick slices of cold boiled ham cooked in a vinegar, sugar, mustard, and pepper sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Vinegar and mustard are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,067 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Barbecued Ham

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Fry the ham slices in their own fat until they begin to crisp.

  2. Move the ham to the side of the dish.

  3. Add vinegar, sugar, mustard, and pepper to the fat in the pan and mix well.

  4. Return the ham to the sauce.

  5. Bring the sauce to a boil.

  6. Cook for 2 minutes.

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. Vinegar + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Mustard + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Vinegar + peppertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Ham + mustardtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together747 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  5. Vinegar + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

What each ingredient does

Thick slices of cold boiled ham
Provides the main body of the dish and crisps in its own fat for browning.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the sauce and balances the sweetness.
White sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the sauce caramelise slightly as it reduces.
Mustard
Adds sharp, pungent flavour that gives the sauce its characteristic bite.

The step that matters

Bring the sauce to a boil and cook for 2 minutes. Boiling briefly reduces the thin vinegar and fat mixture so it clings to the ham rather than pooling. Boiling too long can make the sugar darken and turn bitter.

Swap the mustard

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

  1. Mustardthe original
  2. Capsicumfits about as well
  3. Cabbagefits less well
  4. Cucumberfits less well

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