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Dressed Ham

A ham stuffed with breadcrumbs, onion, seasoned meat, and coated in a stiff batter, then baked until browned.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Ham and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,536 recipes. Both carry 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline, which smells popcorn, roasted. The science ↓

Dressed Ham

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the ham

  1. Boil the ham until fully cooked.

  2. Make gashes in the ham down to the bone.

Stuff and coat

  1. Fill the gashes with a mixture of bread crumbs, chopped onion, and seasoned meat.

  2. In a bowl, combine eggs, flour, and milk to make a stiff batter.

  3. Pour the batter over the ham.

Bake

  1. Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven until browned.

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

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

  2. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  3. Ham + meattop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,095 recipes

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

  4. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

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

  5. Bread + meattop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,924 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
Forms the main body of the dish and carries the stuffing.
Bread crumbs
Bulk the stuffing and absorb moisture from the onion and meat.
Eggs
Bind the batter and help it set firm when baked.
Flour
Thickens the batter so it stays stiff and coats the ham.
Milk
Adds moisture to the batter and helps it brown in the oven.

The step that matters

Pour the batter over the ham. The batter must be stiff, not runny, so it stays on the ham instead of running into the pan. Flour and eggs set as they heat, forming a coating that holds together during baking.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Asparagusfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Onionthe original

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