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Venison Ham

A venison ham cured in olive oil, salt, spices, thyme, onion, and red wine, then roasted.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Olive and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,948 recipes. Both carry methyl 2-methylbutyrate, which smells apple, fatty. The science ↓

Venison Ham

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Trim the ham and lard it with thin slices of bacon.

  2. Soak the ham for 5 to 6 hours in a mixture of olive oil, salt, spices, thyme, sliced onion, and red wine, turning occasionally.

  3. Remove the ham from the pickle.

Roast

  1. Roast the ham before a bright fire, basting with the pickle.

  2. Cook for 1 to 2 hours.

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. Olive + thymetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,948 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl 2-methylbutyrate (apple, fatty).

  2. Thyme + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,171 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Olive + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Thyme + red winetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together749 recipes

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

  5. Olive + red winetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, fruity).

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 its lean meat turns tender and savoury when slowly cooked.
Olive oil
Carries the herbs and spices and helps keep the surface moist during soaking and basting.
Red wine
Adds acidity and flavour to the pickle, helping to tenderise the meat during soaking.
Bacon (in the method)
Lardoons add fat that melts into the meat, keeping it moist and rich during roasting.
Onion
Adds aromatic sweetness to the pickle, flavouring the meat as it soaks.

The step that matters

Soaking the ham in the pickle. Soaking for the full 5 to 6 hours lets the wine, oil, salt and aromatics penetrate the meat. Too short a soak leaves the flavour shallow and the surface less seasoned, and turning it keeps every side in contact with the liquid.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (ham, olive, thyme, red wine):

  1. Tomatofits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Mustardfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against ham, olive, thyme, red 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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