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Boiled Meats

A ham boiled then baked with breadcrumbs and garnished with parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Ham and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,536 recipes. Both carry 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline, which smells popcorn, roasted. The science ↓

Boiled Meats

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare and boil

  1. Soak the ham in cold water overnight.

  2. Boil the ham in water for 4 to 5 hours.

Bake with a crumb crust

  1. Remove the skin and place the ham in a 350°F (175°C) oven for 30 minutes.

  2. Cover the ham thickly with pounded rusk or bread crumbs and return to the oven for another 30 minutes.

Serve

  1. Garnish with parsley before serving.

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

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

  2. Bread + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,588 recipes

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

  3. Ham + parsleytop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,249 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
Forms the main meat, which becomes tender through long, gentle cooking in water.
Pounded rusk or bread crumbs
Form a crumb coating that dries and browns in the oven, adding a crisp, golden crust.

The step that matters

Cover the ham thickly with crumbs before the second bake. Crumbs need an even, thick layer to toast into a crisp, golden crust. Thin or patchy coverage can leave bare spots that brown unevenly or dry out in the oven.

Swap the parsley

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against ham, bread. 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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