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Breaded Ham

Breaded ham is a ham coated with cracker dust, bread crumbs, and seasonings, then boiled and pressed.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Breaded Ham

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the ham

  1. Soak the ham overnight and scrub it well in the morning.

  2. Run a narrow, sharp knife along the bone to loosen the meat, then withdraw the bone.

  3. Dig out the flat bone from the butt-end of the ham.

Stuff and shape

  1. Fill the cavity with a stuffing of bread crumbs, seasoned with pepper, butter, onion, and Worcestershire sauce.

  2. Pack the stuffing tightly and sew the ham into shape using mosquito-netting.

Cook and press

  1. Cover the ham with cold water mixed with vinegar and cook for 20 minutes per pound after boiling begins.

  2. Leave the ham in the water until lukewarm, then press it under an inverted dish with a heavy weight for 8 to 10 hours.

  3. Remove the cloth and skin, then dot the top with black pepper or Hungarian sweet red pepper in a pattern.

Serve

  1. Serve surrounded by a garland of asparagus tops and nasturtium flowers, or parsley and marigolds.

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

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

  3. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  5. Vinegar + oniontop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,226 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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

What each ingredient does

Ham
Is the main meat, cooked gently in water and then pressed while it cools.
Bread crumbs
Form the stuffing that fills the cavity and keeps the ham moist and shaped.
Egg
Binds the coating so the cracker dust adheres to the ham.
Vinegar
Adds a slight acidity to the cooking water, sharpening the flavour of the ham.

The step that matters

Pressing the ham while it cools. Pressing under a heavy weight for 8 to 10 hours compacts the meat and stuffing so the slices hold together. Pressing before the ham cools to lukewarm could leave the meat too soft to keep its shape.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Mustardfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against ham, egg, vinegar, bread, pepper, butter, sauce. 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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