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To Roast a Ham

A ham roasted with onions, carrots, black pepper, and light French wine, then braised and served with a reduced sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,555 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

To Roast a Ham

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Trim the ham and soak it in cold water for 24 hours to remove excess salt.

  2. Place the ham in a deep earthen pan with sliced onions, carrots, and black pepper.

  3. Pour the light French wine over the ham, cover it, and let it marinate for 24 hours.

Roast and serve

  1. Roast the ham before the fire, basting it with the marinade for 4 to 5 hours until well cooked.

  2. Remove the skin, braise the ham, and reduce the marinade and gravy over heat to create a sauce.

  3. Pour the sauce around the ham when 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. Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  2. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Ham + oniontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,159 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

  5. Pepper + winetop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,066 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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 that is slowly cooked until tender and well cooked.
Light french wine
Its acidity and liquid flavour the marinade and help tenderise the meat.
Onions
Add savoury sweetness and aroma to the marinade and the reduced sauce.
Carrots
Add sweetness and body to the marinade and the reduced sauce.

The step that matters

Reduce the marinade and gravy into a sauce. Reducing concentrates flavour and thickens the liquid as water evaporates. Heating it too briefly leaves a thin, weak sauce, while over-reducing can make it salty and sticky.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Tomatofits better
  3. Turnipfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against ham, carrot, pepper, wine. 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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