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Stewing and Boiling Hams

A ham cooked slowly with water, vegetables, herbs, spices, and garlic.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and turnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,002 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Stewing and Boiling Hams

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Clean, scrape, and pare the ham.

Stew

  1. Place the ham in a pot with water, vegetables, sweet herbs, spices, and garlic.

  2. Cook over a very slow fire, allowing it to simmer.

  3. If cooking vegetables separately, cook them first.

  4. Use the cooking liquid for the ham.

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. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Carrot + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  3. Turnip + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Turnip + garlictop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together668 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Carrot + garlictop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,930 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

What each ingredient does

Ham
Is the main protein that becomes tender and flavorful as it simmers slowly.
Vegetables (carrots, turnips)
Add sweetness and aroma to the cooking liquid as they release their flavors during stewing.

The step that matters

Cook over a very slow fire, allowing it to simmer. Gentle simmering keeps the liquid below a hard boil, so the ham's muscle fibers soften slowly without toughening or drying out. Boiling vigorously can make the meat stringy and tough.

Swap the garlic

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

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Celeryfits better
  3. Allspicefits better
  4. Garlicthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against ham, carrot, turnip, clove. 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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