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Roasted Ham

A boiled ham roasted with sherry wine, hot water, sugar, and browned flour, served with a sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Ham and sherry work together. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 377 recipes. Both carry 4-ethyl-2-methoxyphenol, which smells smoky, clove. The science ↓

Roasted Ham

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Place the ham in a roasting pan, skin side up.

  3. Add sherry wine, hot water, and sugar to the pan.

Roast and make the sauce

  1. Roast the ham, basting with wine every five minutes, until it is yellow brown, about 30 minutes.

  2. Transfer the ham to a warm chafing dish and skim off the fat from the pan.

  3. Mix browned flour with a little water and stir it into the pan. Boil for a few minutes, then add more wine, water, and sugar.

  4. Serve the sauce in a gravy dish alongside the ham.

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 + sherrytop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together377 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-ethyl-2-methoxyphenol (smoky, clove).

  2. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Sherry + flourtop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,643 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Sherry + sugartop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,141 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Ham + winetop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together303 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
Is the main cooked meat, already boiled, so roasting mainly heats it and browns the surface.
Sherry wine
Basting liquid that adds flavour and helps the surface brown while roasting.
White granulated sugar
Caramelises in the pan juices, adding sweetness and helping the ham take on a deep brown colour.
Browned flour
Thickens the pan liquid into a sauce and adds a toasted, roasted flavour.

The step that matters

Basting and browning the ham. Basting with wine every few minutes keeps the surface moist while the sugar caramelises. Stop too early and the ham stays pale; leave it too long and the sugar can scorch. Watch the colour closely.

“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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