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To Boil Ham or Shoulders

A ham boiled in water with vinegar, brown sugar, and cloves, then rested before slicing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Vinegar and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 20,806 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

To Boil Ham or Shoulders

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a slow oven”. The 300°F in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Boil the ham

  1. Cook the large ham in plenty of water for 5–6 hours, or the smaller ham for 4 hours.

  2. Add vinegar, brown sugar, and cloves to the water.

  3. Once cooked, remove the ham from the water.

  4. Take off the skin.

  5. Place the ham in a dripping pan, cover with a board and weights.

  6. Let it rest for 24 hours before slicing.

Alternative method

  1. For a different method, remove the ham from the water an hour before it's done.

  2. Take off the skin.

  3. Cover with cracker crumbs and brown sugar.

  4. Bake in a slow oven (300 °F/150 °C) for 1 hour.

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. Vinegar + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  2. Vinegar + clovetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,386 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Ham + clovetop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,666 recipes

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

  4. Ham + vinegartop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together737 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-methylbutanol (malty, whiskey).

  5. Sugar + clovetop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together17,182 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

Sugar and clove barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 17,182 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Vinegar
Adds acidity to the cooking water, sharpening the flavour of the ham.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the surface brown when baked.
Cloves
Adds a warm, aromatic spice flavour to the cooking water.

The step that matters

Cooking the ham in water. Meat proteins toughen and dry out when cooked too hard or too long. Timing the boil carefully keeps the ham tender and juicy, so the stated cooking times matter for the large and small hams.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (ham, vinegar, sugar):

  1. Cinnamonfits about as well
  2. Clovethe original
  3. Tarragonfits about as well
  4. Allspicefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against ham, vinegar, sugar. 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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