Name: Cold Boiled Ham
Ingredients: 1 York ham; pepper; Worcestershire sauce

Why it works: Ham and sauce are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 22% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,314 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Cold Boiled Ham

Ingredients

1 York ham
pepper
Worcestershire sauce

Directions

Boil the York ham until tender.
Sprinkle pepper over the ham.
Pour Worcestershire sauce over the ham before serving.

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.

Ham + saucetop 22% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together1,314 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Ham + peppertop 23% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together6,058 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Pepper + saucetop 27% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together15,303 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Pepper and sauce barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,303 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

York ham: Is the main protein; boiling until tender softens its meat so it can be served cold.
Worcestershire sauce: Adds savoury, tangy flavour to the ham's surface just before serving.

“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.