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Baked Ham

A ham stuffed with finely chopped pork, sage, spices, and onion, baked for several hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Baked Ham

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the ham

  1. Soak the ham for 24 hours, changing the water once or twice.

  2. Skin and trim the ham.

Make the stuffing

  1. In a bowl, combine the chopped pork, sage, black pepper, cloves, allspice, cinnamon, and chopped onion.

  2. Moisten the mixture with pepper-vinegar.

Bake

  1. Make incisions in the ham, starting at the large end, and fill them with the stuffing.

  2. Place the ham in a baking pan and dust with flour.

  3. If the pan is deep, fill it half full with water.

  4. Bake for 3 to 4 hours, basting occasionally.

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. Clove + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Allspice + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Sage + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together331 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  5. Sage + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,388 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

What each ingredient does

Ham
Forms the main body of the dish and carries the stuffing through its incisions.
Fresh pork
Adds moisture and richness to the stuffing, keeping it tender as it bakes.
Sage
Contributes a savory, herbal aroma that flavors the stuffing.
Onion
Adds aromatic sweetness and moisture to the stuffing mixture.
Flour
Dusted on the surface, it helps form a browned crust during baking.

The step that matters

Basting during the long bake. Three to four hours of baking can dry the outer meat, so occasional basting with pan juices keeps the surface moist and helps it brown evenly.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (ham, pork, sage, pepper, clove, allspice, cinnamon):

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against ham, pork, sage, pepper, clove, allspice, cinnamon. 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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