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Stuffed Ham

Ham boiled, skin removed, stuffed with a dressing of cornmeal muffins, hoe‑cake, or grated biscuit, onion, sage, pepper, sugar, celery seeds.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Sage and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,388 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Stuffed Ham

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the ham

  1. Boil the ham and then remove the skin.

  2. Make incisions all over the ham with a large knife.

Make and add the dressing

  1. Prepare a dressing using cornmeal muffins, hoe-cake, or grated biscuit.

  2. Add the finely chopped onion, sage leaves, pepper, sugar, and celery seeds to the dressing.

  3. Press the dressing into the incisions.

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

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

  2. Pepper + celerytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

  3. Sage + celerytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together723 recipes

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

  4. Onion + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Biscuit + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together428 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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 dressing filling.
Cornmeal muffins, hoe-cake, or grated biscuit
Provides the bulk of the dressing that fills the ham's incisions.
Onion
Adds savory aroma and a mild sharpness to the dressing.

The step that matters

Pressing the dressing into the incisions. Cuts that are too shallow or too few leave pockets of dressing unevenly distributed, so the filling may not reach the centre of the ham and flavour will be patchy.

Swap the sage

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (ham, biscuit, onion, pepper, sugar, celery):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Sagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against ham, biscuit, onion, pepper, sugar, celery. 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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