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Ham Baked in Milk

Ham baked in milk with potatoes, thickened gravy, garnished with parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Ham Baked in Milk

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Bake the ham

  1. Place the slice of smoked ham in a fireproof dish.

  2. Cover the ham with sweet milk and bake until tender.

  3. Remove the ham to a hot dish.

Make the gravy

  1. Thicken the milk with flour to make a thin gravy.

  2. Season the gravy with salt and pepper to taste.

  3. Add the cooked potatoes to the gravy and heat through.

Serve

  1. Arrange the potatoes around the ham on a platter.

  2. Sprinkle with parsley before serving.

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

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

  2. Potato + parsleytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,855 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + potatotop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 recipes

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

  4. Milk + potatotop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

  5. Flour + parsleytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Smoked ham
Provides the main savory meat flavor and becomes tender as it bakes in the milk.
Sweet milk
Cooks the ham gently and, once thickened, forms the body of the gravy.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a gravy by absorbing liquid and swelling when heated.
Cooked potatoes
Add starchy bulk to the gravy and absorb its flavor while heating through.

The step that matters

Thickening the milk with flour. Flour must be stirred in smoothly and heated so its starch swells and thickens the milk evenly. Adding it without enough stirring or heat can leave lumps or a thin, raw-tasting gravy.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (ham, milk, flour, pepper, potato):

  1. Parsleythe original
  2. Marjoramfits about as well
  3. Nutmegfits about as well
  4. Thymefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against ham, milk, flour, pepper, potato. 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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