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Boiled Ham

A ham cooked gently in water, then skin removed and served.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Ham and parsley are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 24% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,249 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Boiled Ham

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash and scrape the ham.

  2. If the ham is not very salty, it does not need soaking; if it is old and dry, soak it in lukewarm water for 12 hours, changing the water several times.

Cook

  1. Place the ham in a large pot filled with cold water and let it simmer gently, avoiding a boil to prevent toughening the meat.

  2. Cook for 20 minutes per pound of meat.

Serve

  1. Once cooked, remove the ham from the water, strip off the skin, and serve.

  2. If not serving hot, let it cool before skinning to preserve the juices.

  3. Decorate with twisted scalloped letter paper around the shank or with sprigs of green parsley.

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 + parsleytop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,249 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Ham
Is the main cut of meat, cooked gently until tender and served as the centerpiece.
Cold water
Surrounds the ham as the cooking medium, heating it gently and evenly without drying the meat.

The step that matters

Simmer gently, do not boil. A rolling boil makes the meat fibers contract and toughen, and pushes out juices. Keeping the water just below a boil cooks the ham evenly and keeps it tender and moist.

“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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