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Boiled Ham

A ham boiled in salted water, garnished with pepper, dry mustard, and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Boiled Ham

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the ham overnight and wash it thoroughly the next morning with a stiff brush or coarse cloth.

  2. Place the ham in a large pot and cover it with plenty of water.

Cook and serve

  1. Simmer gently, allowing 15 minutes of cooking time for each pound.

  2. Do not remove the skin until the ham is cold.

  3. Garnish the ham with dots of pepper or dry mustard and arrange parsley around the sides.

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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Mustard + parsleytop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,588 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  3. Pepper + mustardtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Ham + mustardtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together747 recipes

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

  5. Ham + peppertop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,058 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Ham
Is the main cut that is cooked whole, with its fat and connective tissue softening during slow simmering.
Coarse sea salt
Seasons the ham and helps draw out flavor and firm the meat during soaking and cooking.

The step that matters

Simmer gently. A rolling boil toughens and dries the meat and can break the surface, so keep the water barely bubbling. Cooking time depends on weight, so the ham must be cooked through without overcooking.

Swap the mustard

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (ham, pepper, parsley):

  1. Carrotfits better
  2. Capsicumfits about as well
  3. Shallotfits about as well
  4. Mustardthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against ham, pepper, parsley. 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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