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Ham Braised

A smoked ham braised in water and Madeira wine with bay leaves, served with stewed spinach and mashed turnips.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Ham and madeira wine work together. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 154 recipes. The science ↓

Ham Braised

Ingredients

Directions

Braise

  1. Place the cleaned and trimmed ham in a braising pan.

  2. Add 4 quarts of water, 1 bottle of Madeira wine, and a few bay leaves.

  3. Cover the pan and simmer over medium heat until the ham is very tender.

Finish and serve

  1. Remove the ham and wipe it dry, then take off the rind.

  2. Glaze the top of the ham and serve on a large dish.

  3. Accompany with stewed spinach on one side and mashed turnips on the other.

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. Ham + madeira winetop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together154 recipes

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

What each ingredient does

Smoked ham
Forms the main body of the dish and supplies the savoury, smoky meat that becomes tender during braising.
Madeira wine
Adds acidity and sweet, caramelised aroma to the braising liquid, flavouring the ham as it cooks.

The step that matters

Simmer until very tender. Smoked ham is tough collagen-rich meat that needs long, gentle simmering over moderate heat to break down connective tissue. Boiling hard can toughen the surface and make the meat stringy, so a steady simmer keeps it moist and tender.

“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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