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Boiled Ham

A ham cooked slowly in water, served cold with toasted bread, cloves, pepper, and parsley garnish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Boiled Ham

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the ham overnight if it is dry; skip if moist.

  2. Use soft water; if hard, add a little baking soda.

Cook

  1. Place the ham in warm water and boil for 5 to 6 hours.

  2. If the ham is salty, change the water once, but do not use cold water.

  3. Boil vegetables in the ham's cooking liquid to flavor them, but do not add them with the ham.

  4. Once cooked, remove the skin carefully and keep it whole to cover the ham when cold.

Finish and serve

  1. Grate toasted bread over the ham.

  2. Serve cold, removing the skin, and stick cloves at intervals with a ring of pepper around them.

  3. Garnish with parsley or place fringed paper around the small end.

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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Clove + parsleytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,768 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Ham + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  5. Bread + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,588 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

Ham
Provides the main meat and flavor, and is the body of the dish.
Baking soda
Raises the water's pH in hard water, helping the ham soften and cook more evenly.

The step that matters

Keep the water at a gentle boil and do not use cold water. Adding cold water or letting the liquid boil hard can toughen the meat and cause uneven cooking. Steady, moderate heat keeps the ham tender and juicy over the long cook.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (ham, bread, pepper, parsley):

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Celeryfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against ham, bread, pepper, parsley. 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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