Name: Koast Ham
Ingredients: 1 ham; 1 tablespoon flour; 1 teacup water

Why it works: Ham and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 33% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,516 recipes. Both carry phenylacetaldehyde, which smells hawthorne, honey. The science ↓

Koast Ham

Ingredients

1 ham
1 tablespoon flour
1 teacup water

Directions

Prepare

Soak the ham in tepid water overnight.

Roast

Place the ham before a moderate fire and roast for 2 hours, turning frequently.
Remove the ham from the roaster and carefully take off the skin.
Scrape out the fat from the roaster, return the ham, and roast for an additional 2 hours, basting often with the drippings.

Make the sauce and serve

Once done, place the ham on a dish.
In a saucepan, combine the drippings with the flour mixed in water and bring to a boil.
Serve the sauce in a sauce tureen.

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.

Ham + flourtop 33% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together2,516 recipes

Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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 that is slowly roasted, with its skin removed partway through cooking.
Flour: Mixed with water and combined with the drippings, it thickens the sauce as it boils.

“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.