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To Stew a Ham

A slow‑cooked ham stew flavored with bacon, wine, herbs, and vegetables.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and carrot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

To Stew a Ham

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the ham

  1. Soak the ham in lukewarm water for 12 hours, then drain and scrape the rind.

  2. Place the ham in a stew pan and surround it with slices of fat bacon.

  3. Add the weak stock, parsley, sweet herbs, onions, carrots, allspice, and black pepper.

  4. Cover the ham with more slices of bacon and a sheet of white paper.

Stew and finish

  1. Stew for 8 hours, or 10 hours for a very large ham.

  2. Remove the rind from the ham.

  3. Strain the sauce.

  4. Skim the sauce.

  5. Boil the sauce until reduced to a glaze.

  6. Pour the glaze around the ham or serve with a preferred sauce.

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. Parsley + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

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

  2. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Parsley + allspicetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,289 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Allspice + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,395 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  5. Carrot + allspicetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,021 recipes

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

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 becomes tender and flavourful during long, slow stewing.
Fat bacon
Adds fat and savoury flavour that moistens the ham and enriches the surrounding liquid.
Weak stock
Provides the cooking liquid that gently braises the ham and forms the base of the sauce.
Onions
Release sweetness and aromatic depth into the stock as they stew.
Madeira wine
Adds acidity and rich, caramelised flavour when reduced into the glaze.
Port wine
Adds sweetness and body that thickens and deepens the glaze as it reduces.

The step that matters

Boil the sauce until reduced to a glaze. Reducing concentrates flavour and thickens the liquid through evaporation. Boiling too gently or too briefly leaves it thin, while overboiling can make it salty and sticky.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against ham, parsley, carrot, allspice, pepper, madeira wine, port 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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