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 ↓
To Toast Ham
Ingredients
Directions
The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.
Prepare the ham
Boil the ham well.
Remove the skin from the ham.
Bake and brown
Cover the top of the ham thickly with bread crumbs.
Brown the ham in a 400°F (200°C) oven.
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.
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Ham + breadtop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together2,536 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).
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 of the dish and supplies the meaty flavour and moisture.
- Bread crumbs
- Form a crust on top that browns in the oven, adding texture to the ham.
The step that matters
Brown the ham in the oven. The bread crumbs need enough oven heat to brown into a crisp crust, since browning comes from the Maillard reaction at higher temperatures. Too little heat leaves the topping pale and soft.
“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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