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Baked Ham

A ham baked with a flour and water paste, basted with cider or sherry, then topped with rolled crackers.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Ham and cider work together. They rank in the top 27% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 83 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-one, which smells mushroom, metallic. The science ↓

Baked 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.

Prepare and bake

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Cover the ham with a paste made from flour and water.

  3. While cooking, baste the ham with cider, Rhine, or sherry wine diluted with water.

Finish and brown

  1. When done, remove the paste and skin from the ham.

  2. Sprinkle the ham with rolled crackers and return it to the oven to brown.

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 + cidertop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together83 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  2. Flour + cidertop 29% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together812 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. 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 being cooked, which absorbs the basting liquid and provides the savoury flavour.
Flour
Forms a protective paste over the ham that helps hold in moisture during cooking.
Cider, rhine, or sherry wine
Adds sweetness and acidity to the basting liquid, flavouring the ham as it cooks.
Rolled crackers
Form a crumb layer that browns and crisps in the oven.

The step that matters

Browning the crumb coat. Once the paste is removed and crackers are sprinkled on, the crumbs and the ham's sugars brown quickly at oven heat. Watching closely prevents scorching before the surface is evenly golden.

“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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