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Caroline Montague's Ham

A ham roasted with bruised cloves, brown sugar, cider or sherry, and bread crumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Cider and sherry work together. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 143 recipes. Both carry ethyl pentanoate, which smells yeast, fruit. The science ↓

Caroline Montague's Ham

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Soak the ham

  1. Soak the ham overnight in water.

  2. Change the water in the morning.

  3. Soak until noon.

  4. Boil the ham for 20 minutes per pound.

  5. Change the water once.

  6. Add enough to half cover the ham and 1 cup of cider or sherry to the second water.

  7. Remove the ham.

Glaze and bake

  1. Make incisions, inserting the bruised cloves.

  2. Make a paste of brown sugar moistened with cider and pepper.

  3. Spread the paste on the ham.

  4. Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven for 15 minutes.

  5. Baste with weak sherry or sweet cider.

  6. Remove from the oven.

  7. Sprinkle lightly with bread crumbs.

  8. Bake for an additional 10 minutes.

  9. Serve as a roast.

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. Cider + sherrytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together143 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl pentanoate (yeast, fruit).

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

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

  3. Clove + sherrytop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,237 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  4. Ham + sherrytop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together377 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-ethyl-2-methoxyphenol (smoky, clove).

  5. Cider + clovetop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,683 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

What each ingredient does

Hickory cured ham
Is the main cut that is soaked, boiled, then glazed and baked.
Brown sugar
Forms a sweet paste that caramelizes and browns on the ham's surface.
Cider or sherry
Adds acidity and aroma to the soaking water and moistens the sugar paste.
Bread crumbs
Sprinkled on near the end to add a light crust on the surface.

The step that matters

Remove from the oven and sprinkle with bread crumbs. The sugar glaze browns quickly at high heat, so the ham can scorch if left too long. Adding the crumbs late, once the surface is set, lets them crisp without burning.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Clovethe original
  2. Cinnamonfits about as well
  3. Nutmegfits about as well
  4. Thymefits less well

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