Name: Roast Ham
Ingredients: 1 ham; 1 cup water; a little flour

Why it works: Ham and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 33% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,516 recipes. Both carry phenylacetaldehyde, which smells hawthorne, honey. The science ↓

Roast Ham

Ingredients

1 ham
1 cup water
a little flour

Directions

Roast the ham

Spit the ham and place it before a moderate fire to roast for about 2 hours, turning frequently.
Remove the ham from the spit, peel off the rind, and scrape the fat from the roaster.
Return the ham to the fire and roast for an additional 2 hours, basting frequently.

Make the gravy and serve

To make the gravy, pour the drippings from the roaster into a saucepan, add 1 cup of water and a little flour, and bring to a boil.
Serve the gravy in a sauce tureen.

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.

Ham + flourtop 33% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together2,516 recipes

Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

What each ingredient does

Ham: The main cut of meat, which cooks slowly and gains flavour and colour as it roasts.
Flour: Thickens the drippings and water into a gravy as it comes to a boil.

“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.