Skip to main content
Drink

Essence of Ham

A clear liquid made by simmering ham bone, meat, peppercorns, thyme, parsley, and beef stock.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Thyme and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Essence of Ham

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the ham

  1. Carefully cut all the little pieces of meat from the ham bone.

  2. Pound the meat in a mortar.

Simmer the stock

  1. Place the pounded meat and the broken ham bone into a saucepan.

  2. Add the peppercorns, thyme, parsley, and beef stock.

  3. Simmer gently for 2 hours until the flavor is thoroughly extracted.

  4. Strain the liquid into a bottle and set aside for use.

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. Thyme + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Meat + beeftop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,533 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  3. Ham + meattop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,095 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  4. Meat + thymetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,008 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  5. Ham + beeftop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,729 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

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

What each ingredient does

Ham bone
Releases gelatin and savory flavor into the liquid as it simmers.
Pieces of meat from the ham bone
Adds extra meaty flavor that is drawn out during the long simmer.
Beef stock
Forms the liquid base and adds depth to the finished stock.

The step that matters

Simmer gently. A gentle simmer extracts flavor steadily while keeping the liquid clear. A rolling boil makes the stock cloudy and can emulsify fat into it.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (ham, meat, thyme, beef):

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Rosemaryfits about as well
  3. Parsleythe original
  4. Pepperfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against ham, meat, thyme, beef. 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

Beef TeaBeef Tea69 recipesRaw Beef TeaRaw Beef Tea23 recipesVegetable SoupVegetable Soup350 recipesRaspberry VinegarRaspberry Vinegar214 recipes