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Ham to Boil

A large ham is boiled, then coated with cracker crumbs and browned, and garnished with pepper and cloves.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,451 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Ham to Boil

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the ham

  1. Place the ham in a large pot of water and bring to a boil over medium heat, about 1 hour.

  2. Once boiling, reduce heat and simmer for 3 hours, replenishing with boiling water as needed.

  3. After 3 hours, remove the ham from the pot and discard the skin.

Finish and serve

  1. Cover the ham with fine cracker crumbs and place it before a moderate fire to brown.

  2. Once browned, decorate the ham with spots of pepper in a diamond pattern and insert a clove into each spot.

  3. Wrap a ruffle of cut paper around the knuckle and serve with horseradish or sharp sauce.

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. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  2. Clove + horseradishtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,245 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Pepper + horseradishtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,646 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

  5. Ham + peppertop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,058 recipes

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

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; simmering gently keeps it tender and moist.
Fine cracker crumbs
Form a crumb coating that browns in the heat, adding a crisp, golden surface.

The step that matters

Simmer gently and keep the ham covered in water. Once boiling, the heat should be reduced so the water only simmers. A hard boil toughens the meat and can cause uneven cooking, and the ham must stay submerged, so boiling water is added as the level drops.

Swap the horseradish

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Mustardfits better
  4. Horseradishthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against ham, pepper, clove. 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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