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Roasted Ham

A ham roasted with cloves, bread crumbs or cracker dust, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Ham and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,536 recipes. Both carry 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline, which smells popcorn, roasted. The science ↓

Roasted Ham

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Boil the ham until the skin peels off.

  2. Stick cloves over the surface of the ham.

Coat and bake

  1. Cover the ham with bread crumbs or cracker dust and sprinkle with sugar.

  2. Place the ham in a dripping pan, raising it slightly with sticks underneath.

  3. Bake for 3 to 4 hours.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

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

  4. Clove + sugartop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together17,182 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

  5. Bread + sugartop 32% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,638 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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
The main cut of meat, supplying most of the flavor and the dish's body.
Cloves
Adds a warm, aromatic spice flavor to the ham's surface.
Bread crumbs or cracker dust
Forms a coating that browns and crisps during baking.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the coating brown into a caramelized crust.

The step that matters

Bake for 3 to 4 hours. The long bake warms the ham through and browns the sugared crumb coating. Overbaking dries the meat and can scorch the sugar, so watch the crust as the time nears its end.

Swap the clove

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against ham, 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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