Skip to main content
Main

To Stuff a Ham

A ham filled with a bread crumb, butter, herb, and egg yolk mixture, baked and served cold.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

To Stuff a Ham

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the ham

  1. Boil the ham until done, then let it cool before skinning and trimming.

  2. Prepare the stuffing by mixing bread crumbs, butter, pepper, parsley, thyme, and celery.

  3. Make incisions in the ham starting at the hock, about an inch apart, and fill with stuffing as you pull out the knife.

Make the paste

  1. In a bowl, mash the yolks of two hard-boiled eggs.

  2. Mix the mashed yolks with enough brandy to form a paste.

  3. Spread the paste over the ham smoothly.

Finish and serve

  1. Grate bread crumbs over the ham.

  2. Stick cloves in the ham for decoration.

  3. Place the ham in the oven and let it brown gently.

  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 + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

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

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

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

  4. Thyme + celerytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,193 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  5. Pepper + thymetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

What each ingredient does

Ham
Forms the main body of the dish, cooked first and then stuffed and browned.
Bread crumbs
Absorb the butter and herbs in the stuffing and add body to the filling.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, carrying flavour through the bread crumb stuffing.
Hard-boiled egg yolks
Bind with brandy to form a smooth paste that spreads over the ham.
Brandy
Moistens the egg yolks into a spreadable paste and adds aroma.

Swap the celery

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

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Winter savoryfits better
  3. Sagefits better
  4. Celerythe original

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

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesCream of Celery SoupCream of Celery Soup113 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipesBread OmeletteBread Omelette60 recipes