Skip to main content
Main

Baked Ham

A ham soaked in water and vinegar, coated in a flour batter, baked, then rubbed with brown sugar and cloves.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Flour and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 92,116 recipes. Both carry phenylacetaldehyde, which smells hawthorne, honey. The science ↓

Baked Ham

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Soak the ham in water and vinegar overnight.

  2. Gently scrape the outside and wipe it dry.

  3. Make a batter with flour and water, and cover the ham with it.

Bake and glaze

  1. Place the ham in a dripping pan and bake at 300°F (150°C) for 3 hours.

  2. Remove the batter and skin.

  3. Rub ½ lb of brown sugar and cloves into the fat.

  4. Bake for an additional 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. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  2. Flour + clovetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,671 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Ham
The main cut of meat, which the soak and long slow bake keep moist and tender.
Flour
Forms a flour-and-water batter coating that shields the ham from drying out during baking.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and browns on the exposed fat to form a glaze.
Cloves
Adds a warm, aromatic spice flavour to the fat glaze.

The step that matters

Rub the sugar and cloves into the fat after removing the batter and skin. The sugar needs direct contact with the exposed fat to melt and caramelize into a glaze. If the skin and batter are still on, the sugar sits on a barrier and will not brown well.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Jalapenofits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Capersfits about as well
  4. Clovethe original

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

More baked ham recipes

with Apples 3 See all 159 →

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesYorkshire PuddingYorkshire Pudding264 recipes