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Roasted Ham

Roasted ham served with a sherry and sugar gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Ham and sherry work together. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 377 recipes. Both carry 4-ethyl-2-methoxyphenol, which smells smoky, clove. The science ↓

Roasted Ham

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.

Roast the ham

  1. Place the ham in a roasting pan, skin side up.

  2. Add sherry wine, hot water, and sugar to the pan.

  3. Roast in a 400°F (200°C) oven, basting with wine every 5 minutes until golden brown, about 30 minutes.

Make the gravy and serve

  1. Transfer the ham to a warm chafing dish and skim off the fat from the pan.

  2. Mix browned flour with a little water and stir into the pan.

  3. Let it boil for a few minutes, then add more wine, water, and sugar.

  4. Serve the gravy with the ham.

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 + sherrytop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together377 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-ethyl-2-methoxyphenol (smoky, clove).

  2. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Sherry + flourtop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,643 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Sherry + sugartop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,141 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Ham + winetop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together303 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Ham
Is the main cooked meat, and its fat and juices form the base of the gravy.
Sherry wine
Adds acidity and aroma, and its sugars help the ham brown while basting.
White granulated sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the surface caramelize to a golden brown.
Browned flour
Thickens the pan juices into a gravy.

The step that matters

Basting while roasting. Basting with wine every 5 minutes keeps the surface moist so sugars can caramelize evenly into a golden crust rather than drying out or scorching in patches.

“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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