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To Boil a Ham

A ham is boiled with vegetables and herbs, then baked with a crust of crackers or bread crumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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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 ↓

To Boil a Ham

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a slow oven”. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare and boil

  1. Wash and scrape the ham clean.

  2. Place the ham in a pot with enough cold water to cover it.

  3. Add the onions, carrots, celery, cloves, and timothy hay.

  4. Boil until the skin easily peels off the ham.

Crust and bake

  1. Cover the ham with rolled crackers or browned bread crumbs.

  2. Bake in a slow oven at 300°F (150°C) for two hours.

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. Carrot + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  3. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Celery + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,668 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-decalactone (peach, creamy).

  5. Onion + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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 dish, and its fat and juices flavour the crust as it bakes.
Rolled crackers or bread crumbs
Form a crisp, browned crust on the outside of the ham during baking.
Onions
Add aromatic sweetness and savour to the cooking liquid around the ham.
Carrots
Add gentle sweetness and aroma to the cooking liquid around the ham.
Celery
Adds savoury, aromatic flavour to the cooking liquid around the ham.

The step that matters

Boil until the skin easily peels off the ham. Boiling must go far enough to loosen the skin, but the ham should not be overcooked. Testing whether the skin lifts easily shows when the outer layer is ready to remove before the crust is added.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Turnipfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Parsnipfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against ham, carrot, celery, clove, bread. 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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