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To Boil Ham

A ham is boiled with vinegar, herbs, and spices, then roasted with bread crumbs and brown sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Thyme and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

To Boil 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.

Prepare

  1. Soak the ham for 12 to 24 hours.

Boil

  1. Cover the ham with boiling water and add vinegar, bay leaves, thyme, and dried parsley.

  2. Boil very slowly for 2.5 hours.

Trim and glaze

  1. Remove the ham, skin it, and trim the fat to a ½ inch layer.

  2. Trim off any black or discolored areas.

  3. Place the ham in a roasting pan and sprinkle with bread crumbs mixed with brown sugar.

Roast

  1. Roast in a 400°F (200°C) oven for about 30 minutes, adding sherry wine for flavor 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. Thyme + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

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

  3. Thyme + winetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,349 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  4. Thyme + sherrytop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together702 recipes

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

  5. Vinegar + sherrytop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together660 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Ham
Provides the main meat, which is cooked gently until tender and then roasted for color.
Vinegar
Adds mild acidity to the cooking water, giving the ham a slightly tangy background flavour.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp, golden crust on the surface during roasting.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the glaze brown and caramelize in the oven.
Bay leaves
Contribute a subtle herbal aroma to the cooking liquid.

The step that matters

Boil very slowly. Keeping the liquid at a gentle simmer cooks the ham evenly. A hard, rolling boil toughens the meat proteins and can leave the ham dry and stringy.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (ham, vinegar, thyme, bread, sugar, sherry, wine):

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Clovefits better
  3. Tarragonfits about as well
  4. Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against ham, vinegar, thyme, bread, sugar, sherry, wine. 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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