Name: Plain Boiled Ham
Ingredients: 1 ham; cold water; 1 dried red pepper or 1 teaspoon whole cloves; 1 teaspoon whole peppercorns

Why it works: Ham and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 23% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,058 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Plain Boiled Ham

Ingredients

1 ham
cold water
1 dried red pepper or 1 teaspoon whole cloves
1 teaspoon whole peppercorns

Directions

Prepare

Soak the ham overnight in cold water.

Cook

Boil the ham in enough water to cover it, adding the dried red pepper or whole cloves and peppercorns.
Cook for 20 minutes per pound.

Finish and serve

After cooking, remove the skin.
Optionally, add small spots of pepper on the fat after skinning.
Serve hot, or let it cool in the cooking water.

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 + peppertop 23% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together6,058 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Ham: Main protein; the long cooking softens its connective tissue and makes it tender.
Dried red pepper or whole cloves: Adds aromatic spice flavour to the cooking water, which the ham absorbs as it cooks.
Whole peppercorns: Adds a mild, sharp aroma to the cooking water that flavours the ham.

“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.