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Boiled Mutton Ham

Boiled mutton ham served with optional turnips, cabbage, or boiled potatoes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Turnip and potato work together. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 562 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Boiled Mutton Ham

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Prepare the mutton ham as directed in the smoking recipe.

  2. Wash the ham in cold water and soak it overnight in enough cold water to cover it.

Boil

  1. The next day, drain the ham and place it in a pot with enough cold water to cover it.

  2. Heat the water to boiling, then boil the ham gently for 20 minutes per pound.

  3. Half an hour before the ham is done, add the turnips or cabbage if desired.

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. Turnip + potatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together562 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Mutton + hamtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together430 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  3. Mutton + potatotop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together293 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Mutton + turniptop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,558 recipes

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

  5. Ham + turniptop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together692 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).

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

What each ingredient does

Mutton ham
Forms the main body of the dish and supplies its savoury, meaty flavour during boiling.
Turnips or cabbage
Optional vegetables that absorb flavour from the cooking liquid and add mild sweetness.

The step that matters

Boiling gently after bringing the water to a boil. Boiling vigorously toughens the meat and can make it fall apart. A gentle simmer keeps the proteins tender and the ham intact while it cooks through.

Swap the turnip

The recipe marks turnip as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, ham, potato):

  1. Onionfits better
  2. Asparagusfits better
  3. Carrotfits better
  4. Turnipthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, ham, potato. 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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