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To Boil a Ham

A ham is boiled, then roasted with bread crumbs and optional sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 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 ↓

To Boil a Ham

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.

Boil

  1. Wash and scrape the ham thoroughly.

  2. Boil the ham slowly for 3 to 4 hours, depending on its size.

  3. Remove the ham from the water and skin it.

Bake and brown

  1. Place the ham on the grate of a roasting pan and let it stand in a 350°F (175°C) oven for 1 hour.

  2. Dust the fat thickly with fine bread crumbs.

  3. Return the ham to the oven until the crumbs are brown.

  4. If desired, sift a little sugar over the crumbs.

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 + sugartop 32% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,638 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Ham + sugartop 33% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,084 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
Provides the main meat, which is cooked through by slow boiling and then gently baked.
Fine bread crumbs
Form a crust on the fat that browns in the oven.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the crumb crust brown further.

The step that matters

Boil the ham slowly. Slow simmering cooks the ham evenly without toughening the meat, while a hard boil can make the outside tough and dry. The long time is needed to bring the thick joint fully through.

“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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