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Ham or Gammon

A ham or gammon roasted with Canary wine, bread crumbs, parsley, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Ham or Gammon

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Remove the skin from the ham or gammon.

  2. Soak the ham in lukewarm water for 2–3 hours.

  3. Place the ham in a pan.

  4. Pour the Canary wine over the ham.

  5. Let the ham steep in the wine for 10–12 minutes.

Roast

  1. Spit the ham and cover the fat side with sheets of paper.

  2. Pour the soaking wine into the dripping pan.

  3. Baste the ham while roasting.

  4. When cooked, remove the paper.

  5. Dredge the ham with crumbled bread and parsley.

Serve

  1. For hot serving, garnish with bread crumbs.

  2. For cold serving, use a clean napkin.

  3. For cold serving, garnish with green parsley.

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Ham + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  3. Wine + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,645 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  4. Parsley + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

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

  5. Bread + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,588 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Canary wine
Adds flavour and moisture as the ham steeps and its drippings collect in the pan.
Crumbled bread
Forms a crisp, browned crust on the outside of the ham.
Finely chopped parsley
Adds fresh aroma and green colour to the crust.
Butter
Adds fat, richness and flavour to the surface.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Parsleythe original
  3. Clovefits about as well
  4. Nutmegfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against ham, wine, bread, butter. 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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