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To Boil a Ham

A ham boiled with onions, carrots, celery, cloves, and timothy hay, then baked with crackers.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

To Boil a Ham

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a slow oven”. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Wash and scrape the ham clean.

  2. Place the ham in a pot and cover it with cold water.

  3. Add the onions, carrots, celery, cloves, and timothy hay to the water.

Cook and finish

  1. Boil until the skin easily peels off the ham.

  2. Cover the ham with rolled crackers or browned bread crumbs.

  3. Bake in a slow oven at 300°F (150°C) for two 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. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  3. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

  4. Celery + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,668 recipes

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

  5. Onion + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, 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 cut of meat that gets simmered until tender and then baked.
Onions
Add aromatic flavor to the cooking water that carries into the meat.
Carrots
Add sweetness and aroma to the cooking liquid.
Celery
Adds savory, aromatic flavor to the cooking liquid.
Rolled crackers or bread crumbs
Form a crisp, browned crust on the surface during baking.

The step that matters

Boil until the skin easily peels off the ham. Boiling must go long enough to soften the ham's connective tissue and skin so it peels cleanly. Stopping early leaves the skin stuck and the meat tough, while the gentle simmer keeps the meat moist rather than dry.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against ham, carrot, celery, clove, bread. 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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