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Ham, Southern Style

A ham baked with sugar, mustard, celery salt, cracker crumbs, and sherry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,810 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Ham, Southern Style

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.

Cook the ham

  1. Place the ham in a pot, cover with water, and boil slowly until cooked through.

  2. Allow the ham to cool in the water.

  3. Once cool, remove the skin and score the top with a knife.

Glaze and bake

  1. Sprinkle sugar, dry mustard, celery salt, and cracker crumbs on top.

  2. Pour sherry over the ham and bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven for a few minutes.

  3. Garnish with parsley before serving.

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 + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Mustard + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,169 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Mustard + parsleytop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,588 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  4. Ham + sherrytop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together377 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-ethyl-2-methoxyphenol (smoky, clove).

  5. Ham + mustardtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together747 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

Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the top brown in the oven.
Cracker crumbs
Form a crust on the surface that soaks up the glaze.
Sherry
Adds acidity and aroma that flavour the glaze as it bakes.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (ham, sugar, mustard, celery, sherry):

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against ham, sugar, mustard, celery, sherry. 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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