Skip to main content
Main

Westphalia Ham

A smoked ham braised with vegetables and spices in stock.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Westphalia Ham

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the ham

  1. Soak the ham in water for at least 36 hours, changing the water once.

  2. After soaking, trim and cleanse the ham.

  3. Place the ham in a pot with enough cold water and simmer for about 1 hour.

Braise

  1. Transfer the ham to a braising pan and moisten with stock to cover.

  2. Add sliced carrots, onion, celery, garlic, cloves, mace, peppercorns, marjoram, thyme, and bay leaves.

  3. Simmer gently for about 5 hours.

Cool

  1. Allow the ham to cool in the cooking liquid.

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. Onion + garlictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  3. Carrot + marjoramtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together687 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Clove + marjoramtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Celery + marjoramtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together615 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

Smoked ham
Provides the main meat and smoky flavour that the long soak and simmer make tender and mild.
Stock
Keeps the ham moist and adds savoury depth as the liquid reduces during braising.
Carrots
Release sweetness and aromatic flavour into the braising liquid.
Onion
Adds savoury sweetness and aroma to the braising liquid as it softens.

The step that matters

Soaking the ham. Smoked ham is very salty, so soaking it long enough and changing the water draws out excess salt. Skipping or shortening the soak leaves the finished ham too salty.

Swap the mace

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

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

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

More westphalian ham recipes

Croquettes 3 See all 17 →

You might also like

Carrot SoupCarrot Soup134 recipesCream of Celery SoupCream of Celery Soup113 recipesCelery StewCelery Stew25 recipesCelery CroquettesCelery Croquettes16 recipes