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York Ham with Spinach

A ham braised with carrots, onions, celery, cloves, mace, thyme, and bay leaves, then baked with spinach.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

York Ham with Spinach

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the ham

  1. Scrape and trim the ham, then place it in a large pot with enough cold water to cover it.

  2. Add the carrots, onions, celery, cloves, mace, thyme, and bay leaves.

  3. Boil the ham very slowly for 4 to 5 hours, depending on its size.

  4. Allow the ham to cool in its own liquid.

Prepare and serve

  1. Once cool, gently remove the rind without displacing the fat.

  2. Trim the fat surface smoothly with a knife.

  3. To serve hot, place the ham in a baking dish covered with greased paper.

  4. Add enough of its own liquid to reach the edge of the fat and bake for about 30 minutes.

  5. Glaze the ham and garnish with spinach.

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 + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Clove + thymetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,108 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  3. Carrot + thymetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Celery + thymetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,193 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

What each ingredient does

York ham
Provides the main meat, which is slowly simmered until tender and then baked.
Onions
Add aromatic sweetness and savory flavor to the cooking liquid.
Carrots
Add gentle sweetness and body to the cooking liquid.
Celery
Adds savory, aromatic flavor to the cooking liquid.

The step that matters

Boil the ham very slowly. Gentle simmering keeps the meat tender and juicy, while a rapid boil toughens muscle fibers and can break the fat and rind apart.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Winter savoryfits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against ham, carrot, onion, celery, clove, thyme. 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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