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Frizzled Ham

A dish of sliced ham cooked with butter, flour, and milk or cream to make a creamy sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Frizzled Ham

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the ham

  1. Melt the butter in a skillet over medium heat.

  2. Add the sliced ham and fry until it begins to color.

  3. Sprinkle the flour over the ham and fry until nicely browned, stirring often to prevent scorching.

Finish the sauce

  1. Add the milk or cream, bring to a boil, and serve.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Ham + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,475 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  5. Ham + milktop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,089 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Butter
Carries the heat and adds richness, helping the ham and flour brown in the pan.
All-purpose flour
Cooks in the fat to form a roux that thickens the milk or cream into a sauce.
Milk or cream
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, and cream adds richness and a smoother texture.

The step that matters

Browning the flour. Flour must brown in the fat until nutty without burning. Frequent stirring spreads the heat evenly, and the browned roux thickens the sauce with more flavor, while scorched flour tastes bitter.

“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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