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Boiled Ham a LA Chamberlin

A ham boiled with spices and vinegar over several hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Boiled Ham a LA Chamberlin

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the ham in cold water overnight, skin side up.

  2. Place the ham in a large pot of cold water.

  3. Heat the water gradually.

Simmer in stages

  1. Simmer the ham for 5 hours.

  2. Remove the ham.

  3. Discard the water.

  4. Refill the pot with fresh cold water.

  5. Return the ham to the pot.

  6. Simmer for another 5 hours.

  7. Add your choice of vinegar, claret, Burgundy, or Champagne.

  8. Simmer for 3 more 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. Clove + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Clove + macetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  3. Mace + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  4. Vinegar + clovetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,386 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Ham
Forms the main body of the dish and is cooked slowly until tender.
Vinegar, claret, burgundy or champagne
Adds acidity and a tangy flavour to the cooking liquid.
Spices (cloves, mace, cinnamon)
Add warm aromatic flavour to the cooking liquid.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Allspicefits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Cardamomfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against ham, vinegar, clove, cinnamon. 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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