Name: Ham with Madeira
Ingredients: slices of well-boiled ham; 2 tablespoons of butter; ⅓ cup of Madeira wine

Why it works: Ham and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,475 recipes. Both carry trans-2-decenal, which smells waxy, orange. The science ↓

Ham with Madeira

Ingredients

slices of well-boiled ham
2 tablespoons of butter
⅓ cup of Madeira wine

Directions

Heat the butter in a frying pan over medium heat.
Add the slices of ham and toss them in the butter until heated through.
Pour in the Madeira wine and cook for a few minutes until the sauce thickens slightly.
Serve the ham hot, ideally alongside turkey.

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.

Ham + buttertop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together5,475 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).
Ham + madeira winetop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together154 recipes
Butter + madeira winetop 27% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together637 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Well-boiled ham: Forms the main body of the dish and absorbs the buttery, wine-based sauce.
Butter: Adds fat and richness, carrying flavour and helping the ham warm evenly without drying.
Madeira wine: Adds sweetness and aroma, and reduces slightly to form a thickened sauce.

“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.