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To Boil a Ham

A ham boiled with onions, carrots, celery, cloves, and timothy hay.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

To Boil a Ham

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash and scrape the ham clean.

  2. Place the ham in a pot and cover it with cold water.

  3. Add the onions, carrots, celery, cloves, and timothy hay to the water.

Boil

  1. Boil continuously until the skin easily peels from the ham.

  2. Cover the ham after boiling.

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. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Carrot + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  3. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

  4. Celery + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,668 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-decalactone (peach, creamy).

  5. Onion + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Ham
The main cut of meat, which becomes tender through long, gentle cooking in water.
Onions
Add savoury, sweet aromatic flavour to the cooking liquid.
Carrots
Add natural sweetness and aromatic flavour to the cooking liquid.
Celery
Adds savoury, herbal aromatic flavour to the cooking liquid.
Cloves
Add a warm, spiced aroma to the cooking liquid.

The step that matters

Boil continuously until the skin easily peels from the ham. Long cooking softens the connective tissue holding the skin to the meat, so easy peeling is the sign of doneness. Keep the liquid at a steady boil, since a violent boil can toughen the meat and make it fall apart.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (ham, carrot, celery, clove):

  1. Turnipfits better
  2. Parsnipfits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against ham, carrot, celery, clove. 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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