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Baked Ham with Olives

A ham coated in flour and water, baked with olives and garnished with lettuce ribbons.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Olive and lettuce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,580 recipes. Both carry trans-2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

Baked Ham with Olives

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the ham

  1. Cover the ham with a flour and water paste.

  2. Bake slowly at 300°F (150°C) for about five hours, basting often.

  3. Remove the paste and skin, leaving skin around the shinbone.

Finish and serve

  1. Brush the ham with the beaten egg.

  2. Sprinkle with bread crumbs and bake until brown.

  3. Cut olives in halves and arrange along the edge of the skin.

  4. Garnish with lettuce leaves cut in ribbons and a paper frill.

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. Olive + lettucetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,580 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

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

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

  3. Bread + olivetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,091 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  4. Flour + lettucetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,236 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Ham
Main cut of meat that is slowly cooked until tender and juicy.
Flour and water paste
Forms a protective crust that shields the ham from drying out during slow baking.
Beaten egg
Gives the bread crumb coating a glossy surface and helps it adhere.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp coating that browns in the oven.
Olives
Add a salty, briny flavour that contrasts with the rich ham.

The step that matters

Slow baking with frequent basting. Baking at a low temperature for a long time lets connective tissue soften gradually without drying the meat. Basting keeps the surface moist and helps the ham stay juicy throughout.

Swap the lettuce

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (ham, flour, egg, bread, olive):

  1. Asparagusfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Spinachfits about as well
  4. Lettucethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against ham, flour, egg, bread, olive. 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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