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Boiled and Baked Ham

A ham soaked, boiled, and baked with brown sugar, cloves, water, vinegar, butter, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Boiled and Baked Ham

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Soak the ham overnight.

  2. Place the ham in cold water and boil for 4 hours for every pound.

  3. Remove the ham from the water and skin it.

Glaze and bake

  1. Cover the ham with brown sugar and stick cloves into it.

  2. In a dripping pan, combine water and vinegar, then rub butter into flour and add to the pan.

  3. Bake the ham at 350°F (175°C) for one hour, basting constantly.

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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Clove + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,671 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Sugar + vinegartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Clove + vinegartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,386 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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
Is the main cooked meat, which is softened by long soaking and boiling.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and helps form a caramelized glaze on the surface during baking.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the pan liquid, supporting a glossy, tender finish.
Flour
Thickens the butter and pan liquid into a light sauce that clings to the ham.

The step that matters

Basting constantly during baking. Frequent basting keeps the surface moist and lets the sugar glaze melt and brown evenly instead of drying out or scorching.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (ham, sugar, vinegar, butter, flour):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Tarragonfits about as well
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against ham, sugar, vinegar, butter, flour. 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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