Skip to main content
Main

Ham to Boil

A ham is boiled with salt, water, vinegar, citrus, spices, and bread crust, then baked with suet and coarse paste, served with thick jelly gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Lime and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,491 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Ham to Boil

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the ham in lukewarm water for at least 12 hours if very dry.

  2. Trim the ham clean.

  3. Place it in plenty of cold water and remove any scum.

Cook

  1. Simmer the ham slowly for 4 hours without boiling.

  2. Remove the skin.

  3. Dust the ham with grated bread crust or glaze it.

  4. Stick cloves into the ham.

  5. Decorate the knuckle with white paper.

  6. Bake the ham with suet in the pan.

  7. Cover the top with coarse paste.

  8. Serve the thick jelly gravy for flavoring stock or soups.

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. Lime + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,491 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Lime + clovetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together909 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

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

  5. Vinegar + peppertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Ham
Is the main meat that is softened by long, slow simmering.
Coarse sea salt
Seasons the ham and helps preserve its flavor during long cooking.
Suet
Adds fat that enriches the flavor and moistness of the ham in the pan.
Grated bread crust
Forms a dusting that helps the surface brown during baking.

The step that matters

Simmer the ham slowly for 4 hours without boiling. Boiling toughens the meat and breaks up its surface, while a gentle simmer keeps the fibers tender and the ham moist and evenly cooked.

Swap the lime

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

  1. Figfits better
  2. Lemonfits about as well
  3. Cherryfits about as well
  4. Limethe original

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

More boiled ham recipes

Cold 4 See all 328 →

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipesBread OmeletteBread Omelette60 recipesOatmeal BreadOatmeal Bread51 recipes