Why it works: Ham and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,536 recipes. Both carry 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline, which smells popcorn, roasted. The science ↓
Roast Fresh Ham
Ingredients
Directions
The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.
Boil the small pig ham until nearly done.
Remove the skin and cover the ham with bread crumbs, coarse sea salt, and a little cayenne pepper.
Place the ham in a dripping pan and bake at 400°F (200°C) until perfectly done.
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.
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Ham + breadtop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together2,536 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).
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Bread + peppertop 16% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together20,964 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
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Ham + peppertop 23% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together6,058 recipes
Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Pig ham
- Provides the main body of the dish, cooked through by boiling and then baking.
- Bread crumbs
- Form a crust over the ham that helps it brown during baking.
The step that matters
Bake until perfectly done. Boiling only brings the ham to nearly done, so the final baking must finish cooking the meat through. Pork is safe only when its internal temperature is reached, so checking with a thermometer is more reliable than judging by appearance.
“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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