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Boiled Ham

A large ham is soaked, boiled with molasses, celery, turnips, onions, sweet herbs, then baked with egg, breadcrumbs, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and turnip are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,418 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Boiled 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

  1. Clean the ham with a coarse hand brush.

  2. Soak the ham in a mixture of vinegar and water.

Simmer

  1. Place the ham in a pot with cold water, molasses, celery, turnips, onions (if using), and sweet herbs, then heat the water gradually.

  2. Simmer for 5 hours.

Glaze and bake

  1. Remove the skin from the ham.

  2. Rub the ham with an egg, then strew bread crumbs over the ham.

  3. Baste the ham with butter.

  4. Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven until golden brown.

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. Celery + turniptop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Turnip + oniontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Celery + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Ham + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked 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
Is the main cut of meat that is cooked and served.
Molasses
Adds sweetness and a dark color to the cooking liquid.
Egg
Binds the bread crumbs so they stick to the ham's surface.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp, browned crust on the outside of the ham.
Butter
Adds fat that helps the crust brown and gives a rich flavor.

The step that matters

Heat the water gradually. Bringing the ham up to temperature slowly lets it cook evenly and keeps the meat tender rather than tough and dry on the outside.

Swap the onion

The recipe marks onion as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (ham, molasses, celery, turnip, egg, bread, butter):

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Carrotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against ham, molasses, celery, turnip, egg, bread, butter. 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.

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