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Cooking Whole Hams

A whole ham is soaked, braised with cider or wine and hay, then roasted with bread crumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Ham and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,536 recipes. Both carry 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline, which smells popcorn, roasted. The science ↓

Cooking Whole Hams

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 and braise

  1. Soak the ham first.

  2. Place the ham in a pot, add cider or red wine, and fill gaps with sweet meadow hay.

  3. Add a little water, cover, and cook slowly for a long time based on the ham's size.

Finish and roast

  1. Remove the ham from the pot, take off the skin, and baste with bread crumbs.

  2. Roast in a preheated oven at 400°F (200°C) for 30 minutes.

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 + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,536 recipes

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

  2. Cider + breadtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together120 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl decanoate (grape, waxy).

  3. Ham + cidertop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together83 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Whole ham
The main cut, which becomes tender through long, slow cooking in liquid.
Cider or red wine
Adds moisture and acidity to the braising liquid, flavouring the meat as it cooks.
Bread crumbs
Form a crust on the surface that browns in the oven.

The step that matters

Cook slowly for a long time. Low, slow heat in liquid breaks down the connective tissue in the ham, making it tender. Rushing with high heat tightens the muscle fibres and leaves the meat tough and dry.

“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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