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Barbecued Ham

Barbecued ham is slices of cold boiled ham fried and glazed with a sauce of vinegar, sherry, mustard, sugar, and paprika or cayenne.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Vinegar and mustard are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,067 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Barbecued Ham

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Fry the slices of cold boiled ham in their own fat.

  2. Remove the ham from the pan and place it in a warm dish.

  3. In the same pan, add vinegar, sherry, mustard, sugar, and paprika or cayenne to the remaining gravy and heat the sauce until it boils.

  4. Pour the sauce over the ham and cover the dish.

  5. Let the ham and sauce sit together for a minute before serving.

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. Vinegar + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Vinegar + sherrytop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together660 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Ham + mustardtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together747 recipes

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

  5. Vinegar + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

What each ingredient does

Cold boiled ham
Provides the meat and its fat, which is rendered in the pan to cook the slices.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the sauce and balances the sweetness.
Sherry
Adds a mellow, aromatic wine flavour to the sauce.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that rounds out the sharp vinegar and mustard.
Prepared mustard
Adds sharpness and savoury depth to the sauce.

The step that matters

Heating the sauce until it boils. Boiling reduces the sauce slightly and blends the sharp vinegar, mustard and sugar into one flavour. Heating it too little leaves the sauce thin and harsh-tasting, while boiling it too long can thicken it too much or make the vinegar taste overpowering.

Swap the mustard

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

  1. Mustardthe original
  2. Capsicumfits about as well
  3. Cucumberfits less well
  4. Shallotfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against ham, vinegar, sherry, sugar. 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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