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Savory Baked Sliced Ham

A sliced ham baked with sugar, mustard, vinegar, and water, parboiled to reduce salt and basted during cooking.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Mustard and vinegar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,067 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Savory Baked Sliced Ham

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Parboil the ham to remove excess salt.

  2. While the ham is wet, rub both sides with the mixed mustard and sugar.

Bake

  1. Place the ham in a fireproof dish and add a little water and the vinegar.

  2. Cover the dish and bake gently at 350°F (175°C) for 1 hour, basting occasionally with the liquid.

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. Mustard + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Ham + mustardtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together747 recipes

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

  3. Sugar + vinegartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

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

  4. Sugar + mustardtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,424 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Ham
Provides the main meat; parboiling first draws out excess salt.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the surface brown as it bakes.
Dry mustard
Adds a sharp, savoury bite that balances the sweetness of the sugar.
Mild vinegar
Adds acidity that gives the ham a tangy flavour and moistens the dish.

The step that matters

Parboil the ham first. Parboiling draws out excess salt from the cured ham. Skipping it can leave the finished ham too salty, and the sugar and mustard coating cannot correct that.

“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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