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Baked Ham, No. 1

A ham baked after simmering with cloves, peppercorns, herbs, then coated with bread crumbs and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,768 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Baked Ham, No. 1

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Soak the ham in cold water for 1-2 hours.

Cook the ham

  1. Place the ham in a pot with enough tepid water to cover it, along with cloves, peppercorns, and herbs.

  2. Cook slowly for 15 minutes per pound.

  3. After cooking, remove the ham, skin it, and sprinkle with bread crumbs and sugar.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake in a hot oven at 400°F (200°C) for 12 minutes per pound.

  2. Garnish with parsley and serve hot or cold.

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 + parsleytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,768 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Ham + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,536 recipes

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

  3. Bread + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,588 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Clove + breadtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,129 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Ham
Is the main cooked meat that the whole dish is built around.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp, browned crust on the surface during baking.
Sugar
Sweetens the crust and helps it brown in the oven.

The step that matters

Baking the skinned ham in a hot oven. Sugar and bread crumbs can scorch at high heat if the ham is left too long, so the crust needs watching. The ham is already cooked, so baking mainly builds the browned crust and heats it through.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Allspicefits better
  4. Parsleythe original

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