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Bacon Gammon, to Bake

A gammon of bacon seasoned with herbs, boiled, then baked with pastry and bacon slices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Thyme and marjoram match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,225 recipes. Both carry terpineol, which smells pine, woody. The science ↓

Bacon Gammon, to Bake

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the gammon

  1. Soak the gammon of bacon overnight.

  2. Scrape the gammon clean.

  3. Boil until tender.

  4. Pare the underside of the gammon.

  5. Remove the skin.

Stuff and season

  1. Stuff the gammon with chopped thyme, sage, savoury, sweet marjoram, pennyroyal, strawberry leaves, violet leaves, and fennel.

  2. Mix the herbs with the yolks of hard-boiled eggs, pepper, and nutmeg.

  3. Season the gammon with pepper and nutmeg.

Bake and serve

  1. Wrap the gammon in pastry.

  2. Bake the gammon with whole cloves and slices of raw bacon on top, adding butter.

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. Thyme + marjoramtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: terpineol (pine, woody).

  2. Sage + marjoramtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together507 recipes

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

  3. Thyme + sagetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,485 recipes

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

  4. Thyme + fenneltop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together337 recipes

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

  5. Marjoram + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together687 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

What each ingredient does

Gammon of bacon
Forms the main body of the dish, providing the meat that is stuffed, boiled and baked.
Yolks of hard-boiled eggs
Bind with the chopped herbs into a stuffing that holds together and adds richness.
Butter
Adds fat and moisture to the surface, helping the top brown and stay tender while baking.
Slices of raw bacon
Lay over the top during baking, adding fat that bastes the gammon and flavours the crust.

The step that matters

Boil until tender. The gammon is cooked through before baking, so boiling too briefly leaves the meat tough and dry, while overboiling makes it fall apart and lose flavour. Check for a fork-tender centre before moving on.

Swap the strawberry

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (thyme, sage, marjoram, fennel, egg, pepper, nutmeg):

  1. Lemonfits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Orangefits better
  4. Strawberrythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against thyme, sage, marjoram, fennel, egg, pepper, nutmeg. 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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