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To Stuff a Ham

A ham stuffed with a bread crumb, butter, parsley, celery, pepper mixture and egg yolks, then baked and garnished.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,810 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

To Stuff a Ham

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the ham

  1. Boil the ham very slowly. If it boils hard, it will become stringy.

  2. Let it simmer all day if necessary.

  3. Skin and remove extra fat.

Prepare the stuffing

  1. Make stuffing by moistening bread crumbs in water and seasoning with pepper, butter, parsley, and celery.

  2. Cut the bone out with a sharp knife.

  3. Mix the yolks of 2-3 hard boiled eggs with enough ham water to moisten.

  4. Spread the mixture over the ham.

  5. Grate bread crumbs on top.

Bake and serve

  1. Brown the ham in the oven.

  2. Garnish with slices of hard boiled egg, decorative cuts of pickled beets, cloves, or green parsley.

  3. Slice the ham.

  4. Serve cold.

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. Parsley + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

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

  5. Celery + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,668 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-decalactone (peach, creamy).

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, and slow simmering keeps it tender rather than stringy.
Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture to form the stuffing and, grated on top, help the surface brown.
Hard boiled egg yolks
Bind the stuffing with a rich, creamy texture when moistened with ham water.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and flavour in the stuffing and helps the top brown.

The step that matters

Boil the ham very slowly. At a hard boil, the meat's muscle fibres toughen and break apart, making the ham stringy. A gentle simmer cooks it evenly and keeps it tender and sliceable.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against ham, bread, pepper, butter, parsley, celery, egg. 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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