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Ham a LA Espagnole

Ham à la Espagnole is a ham dish cooked with butter, cider, breadcrumbs, pepper, and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Ham a LA Espagnole

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Melt the butter in a dish.

  2. Add the ham and brown it well, then remove it from the dish.

  3. Mix the bread crumbs, cider, pepper, and chopped parsley with the fat in the dish.

  4. Return the ham to the dish and serve hot.

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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

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

  4. Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  5. Bread + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,588 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
Is the main food; browning it builds savory flavor and color on its surface.
Butter
Provides fat for browning the ham and carries the flavor into the sauce.
Fine bread crumbs
Absorb liquid and thicken the pan mixture into a loose sauce.
Cider
Supplies liquid and mild acidity that lifts the rich pan fat and browned bits.

The step that matters

Brown the ham well. Browning triggers the Maillard reaction, which creates the deep savory flavor and color of the dish. Ham removed while pale will taste flat, and the sauce built from the pan will lack depth.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, ham, bread, cider, pepper):

  1. Thymefits about as well
  2. Parsleythe original
  3. Clovefits about as well
  4. Nutmegfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, ham, bread, cider, pepper. 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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