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Boiled and Baked Ham

A ham boiled with vegetables and spices, then coated with egg white and sugar or breadcrumbs, and baked until browned.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 ↓

Boiled and Baked 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

  1. Wash and scrape the ham clean.

  2. Place the ham in cold water to cover it.

Boil

  1. Add the onions, carrots, celery, cloves, and timothy hay to the water.

  2. Boil until the skin easily peels from the ham.

Glaze and bake

  1. Remove the ham and cover it with the egg white.

  2. Sprinkle sugar or bread crumbs over the ham.

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

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
Is the main cut that is simmered, then baked until browned and tender.
Raw egg white
Forms a thin coating that helps the sugar or crumbs stick to the surface.
Sugar or bread crumbs
Creates a sweet, browned crust during baking.
Onions
Add aromatic flavor to the cooking water.

The step that matters

Glaze and bake. The sugar or crumbs can scorch if the oven runs hot, so a slow oven lets the surface brown gradually while the ham heats through without burning.

Swap the onion

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

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

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