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A Ham for Boiling

A ham boiled in water, optionally with beer.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Ham and beer work together. They rank in the top 30% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 25 recipes. Both carry gamma-nonanolactone, which smells coconut, sweet. The science ↓

A Ham for Boiling

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the ham in tepid water for 7 to 8 hours.

  2. Trim off all excess fat from the ham.

Cook

  1. Boil the ham until fully cooked.

  2. Optionally, boil it in beer for added flavor.

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 + beertop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Ham
Is the main protein that is cooked through by boiling.
Beer
Optional liquid that adds flavor to the ham during boiling.

“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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