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Receipt for Pounding Ham

A smooth ham paste made by pounding ham with butter and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,686 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Receipt for Pounding Ham

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Remove any skin from the ham and cut it into small pieces.

  2. Pound the ham in a mortar until it becomes a smooth paste.

  3. Add butter gradually while continuing to pound until well blended.

Season and store

  1. Season with mace, nutmeg, and cayenne or white pepper to taste.

  2. If using for brown meat, add a small amount of cloves if desired.

  3. Store the mixture in a cool place immediately after preparation.

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. Nutmeg + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Mace + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Mace + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  5. Nutmeg + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

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 paste and provides its meaty flavour.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, helping the pounded ham become smooth and spreadable.

The step that matters

Pound the ham and butter until smooth. Breaking the meat into a fine, evenly blended paste gives the spread a smooth texture. Adding butter gradually lets it emulsify into the meat instead of separating into greasy pockets.

Swap the clove

The recipe marks clove as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (ham, butter, mace, nutmeg, pepper):

  1. Clovethe original
  2. Cinnamonfits about as well
  3. Allspicefits less well
  4. Parsleyfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against ham, butter, mace, nutmeg, pepper. 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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