Skip to main content
Main

To Boil Ham

A ham boiled slowly in water, optionally flavored with pepper and cloves.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Pepper and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,451 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

To Boil Ham

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Place the ham in a pot with cold water.

  2. Simmer gently for 4 to 5 hours without boiling.

  3. Change the water if the ham is very salty.

  4. Remove the rind before serving.

  5. Optionally, decorate with whole pepper or cloves in a diamond pattern.

  6. If the ham is very dry, soak it in warm water for 12 to 24 hours before cooking.

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. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

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

  3. Ham + peppertop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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, which becomes tender through long, gentle simmering in water.

The step that matters

Simmer gently without boiling. Rapid boiling toughens the meat's proteins and can make the ham dry and stringy, while a gentle simmer lets the connective tissue soften slowly.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Parsleyfits about as well
  2. Clovethe original
  3. Marjoramfits about as well
  4. Celeryfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against ham, pepper. 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 boiled ham recipes

Cold 4 See all 328 →

You might also like

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