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Cooking Whole Hams

A method for cooking a whole ham slowly with cider or wine, hay, and bread crumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Ham and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,536 recipes. Both carry 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline, which smells popcorn, roasted. The science ↓

Cooking Whole Hams

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the ham first.

  2. Place the ham in a cheese pot and add the cider or red wine.

  3. Fill the gaps with sweet meadow hay and add a little water.

Cook

  1. Cover and cook very slowly for a long time, depending on the size of the ham.

  2. Remove the ham from the pot and take off the skin.

Finish

  1. Baste the ham with bread crumbs.

  2. Roast in a high-power oven on the lower shelf for 30 minutes.

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. Ham + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,536 recipes

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

  2. Cider + breadtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together120 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl decanoate (grape, waxy).

  3. Ham + cidertop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together83 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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

What each ingredient does

Ham
Main protein; slow cooking in liquid keeps the meat moist and tender.
Cider or red wine
Adds acidity and aroma to the cooking liquid and helps flavour the meat.
Sweet meadow hay
Gives a subtle aromatic flavour to the ham as it cooks in the pot.
Bread crumbs
Form a crust on the surface that browns during roasting.

The step that matters

Cover and cook very slowly. Low, slow heat lets the connective tissue soften and the meat stay moist. Cooking too hot toughens the proteins and dries the ham, so the time must match the ham's size.

“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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