Skip to main content
Main

Roast Ham with Madeira Sauce

Roast ham served with a Madeira wine sauce and vegetable garnish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Carrot and turnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,002 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Roast Ham with Madeira Sauce

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.

Prepare the ham

  1. Choose a ham by cutting close to the bone; if the odor is sweet, the ham is good.

  2. Soak the ham in cold water for 24 hours, changing the water once.

  3. Scrape the ham well and trim any ragged parts.

Cook the ham

  1. Place the ham in enough cold water to cover, with the onion stuck with cloves and the bouquet garni.

  2. Boil the ham for 4 hours.

  3. Remove the ham from heat and let it cool in the pot liquor.

  4. Carefully take the ham out, remove the skin, dust with bread or cracker crumbs, and brown it in the oven at 400°F (200°C).

  5. Serve the ham hot or cold with Madeira sauce.

Make the Madeira sauce

  1. Heat 1 pint of rich brown gravy in a thick saucepan.

  2. Season the gravy with salt and pepper to taste.

  3. When hot, add ½ cup Madeira wine and stir until thick enough to coat the spoon.

  4. Strain the sauce through a fine sieve and serve hot.

Prepare the garnish

  1. Pare and cut the carrots and turnips into shapes for garnish.

  2. Boil the vegetables in well‑salted water, then place them in cold water to retain color.

  3. Heat the vegetables in the sauce and arrange them around the ham.

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. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Carrot + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Turnip + oniontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Ham
Its large mass of lean meat and bone is the main body of the dish, cooked slowly to tenderness.
Madeira wine
Adds sweetness and aromatic depth to the gravy, rounding out its savory flavor.
Brown gravy (in the method)
Forms the thick, savory base of the sauce that coats the ham and garnish.
Bread or cracker crumbs
Coat the ham's surface so it browns and forms a crisp, golden crust in the oven.
Carrots
Add color and mild sweetness as the garnish around the ham.

The step that matters

Reducing the Madeira sauce. Stirring until the sauce thickens enough to coat a spoon matters because the gravy must concentrate and gain body; underheating leaves it thin, while overheating can scorch the sugars and dull the flavor.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (ham, carrot, turnip, bread, clove, madeira wine, pepper):

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Parsnipfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against ham, carrot, turnip, bread, clove, madeira wine, 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.

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesCarrot SoupCarrot Soup134 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipesBread OmeletteBread Omelette60 recipes