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Baking

To Bake a Ham

A ham baked with cloves, spices, breadcrumbs, and a molasses‑vinegar glaze.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

To Bake a Ham

Oven, in the book's wordsA very slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a very slow oven”. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the ham

  1. Boil the ham for 2 hours.

  2. Skim and trim the edges.

  3. Stick cloves all over the fat, half an inch apart.

  4. Sprinkle a small quantity of ground cinnamon, mace, and allspice over it.

  5. Add a thick layer of fine bread crumbs.

Bake and baste

  1. Bake for 2¼ hours in a slow oven at 300°F (150°C), basting every 15 minutes with a mixture of molasses, vinegar, and water.

  2. For best results, boil the ham one day and bake it the next.

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. Clove + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Cinnamon + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Clove + macetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  5. Mace + allspicetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

What each ingredient does

Ham
Provides the main meat, which is cooked through by boiling and then gently baked.
Molasses
Adds sweetness and helps the glaze darken and caramelise during baking.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that balances the sweetness of the molasses glaze.
Fine bread crumbs
Forms a crust layer on the surface of the ham as it bakes.

The step that matters

Basting every 15 minutes. Regular basting keeps the glaze moist so it does not dry out or burn, and the sugars in the molasses caramelise slowly into a glossy coating.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (ham, clove, cinnamon, allspice, bread, molasses, vinegar):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Gingerfits better
  3. Cardamomfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against ham, clove, cinnamon, allspice, bread, molasses, vinegar. 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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