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A New Ham Stuffed

A ham stuffed with a mixture of chopped ham, suet, onion, cloves, allspice, pepper, thyme, and bread crumbs, baked until done.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,874 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

A New Ham Stuffed

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 the stuffing

  1. Chop the ham, suet, and onion.

  2. Mix the chopped ingredients with cloves, allspice, black pepper, thyme, and bread crumbs.

Prepare the ham

  1. Boil the small ham until two-thirds done, then soak in cold water for 5 minutes.

  2. Make deep cuts into the bone of the ham.

  3. Stuff the cuts tightly with the prepared mixture.

  4. Cover the ham with the remaining stuffing.

  5. Add more bread crumbs on top.

Bake

  1. Bake at 350°F (175°C) for 3 hours.

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. Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Allspice + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,077 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Clove + thymetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,108 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Pepper + thymetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  5. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

What each ingredient does

Ham
Forms the main body and flavour of the dish, with the chopped ham adding savoury richness to the stuffing.
Suet
Adds fat to the stuffing, keeping it moist and tender as it cooks.
Bread crumbs
Absorb juices and fat, helping the stuffing hold together and stay moist.
Onion
Adds aromatic flavour to the stuffing.

The step that matters

Boil the small ham until two-thirds done. Partial cooking before stuffing and baking helps the ham cook through during the long bake, while leaving enough time for the stuffing to heat without drying the meat out.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (ham, clove, allspice, pepper, thyme, bread):

  1. Carrotfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Mustardfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against ham, clove, allspice, pepper, thyme, bread. 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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