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Ham with Cream Gravy

A slice of ham served with a cream gravy seasoned with pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Ham and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 22% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,370 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-one, which smells mushroom, metallic. The science ↓

Ham with Cream Gravy

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the ham and gravy

  1. Heat a frying pan over medium‑high heat.

  2. Add the slice of ham and brown lightly on both sides.

  3. Pour in the cream and add a dash of pepper.

  4. Let the cream boil for 2 minutes.

Serve

  1. Serve the ham on a deep platter with the cream poured over it.

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 + creamtop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,370 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Cream + peppertop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together21,449 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Cream and pepper barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 21,449 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Ham
Provides the savoury meat, browned lightly for flavour, that the gravy is served over.
Cream
Adds richness and fat, and thickens slightly as it boils, forming the gravy.

The step that matters

Let the cream boil for 2 minutes. Boiling cream briefly reduces its water through evaporation, which thickens it into a gravy. Boiling it too long or too hard can cause the fat to separate and the sauce to turn grainy or oily.

“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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