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A Ham

A ham rolled around a tongue, boiled, and served cold with sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Vinegar and mustard are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,067 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

A Ham

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the ham

  1. Cut the ham through the thick part of the flesh down to the bone, slicing thinly without separating the fat from the lean.

  2. Leave a portion of the rind on at the knuckle in a semi-circle, trimming it into scallops or points.

  3. Boil the head of the ham for 30 minutes and allow it to cool before preparing.

  4. Remove the bones and lay the ham on a clean cloth.

  5. Sprinkle or rub the inside with a mixture of coarse sea salt, mace, and cayenne pepper.

  6. Place the tongue on top and roll it up in the ham, securing it with a skewer and binding tightly with tape.

Cook and serve

  1. Boil or stew the ham until extremely tender, covering it with stock or strong broth and simmering for 2 hours.

  2. Glaze the head and serve with rich brown gravy or ordinary sauces.

  3. Serve cold with Oxford brawn sauce made from brown sugar, vinegar, mustard, and salt, adding oil if desired.

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. Vinegar + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Pepper + mustardtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

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

  4. Ham + mustardtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together747 recipes

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

  5. Sugar + vinegartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

What each ingredient does

Ham
Forms the main body of the dish and becomes tender through long, slow simmering.
Tongue
Adds rich, tender meat rolled inside the ham as the central filling.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness to the sauce, balancing the sharpness of the vinegar and mustard.
Vinegar
Adds acidity to the sauce, cutting through the richness of the meat.
Mustard
Adds sharp, pungent flavour to the sauce.

The step that matters

Simmering until extremely tender. Long, gentle simmering in liquid breaks down the tough connective tissue in the ham and tongue. Boiling hard can toughen the meat and make it stringy, so the liquid should stay at a gentle simmer.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (ham, pepper, sugar, vinegar, mustard):

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Allspicefits better
  3. Celeryfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against ham, pepper, sugar, vinegar, mustard. 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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