Skip to main content
Main

Ham Pie

A savory pie filled with ham and forcemeat, seasoned with pepper, mace, cinnamon, cloves, bay leaves, and bacon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Cinnamon and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Ham Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the ham

  1. Half boil the ham, then skin it and remove the bone.

  2. Fill the space with a rich forcemeat.

  3. Season the ham with pepper, mace, cinnamon, and cloves, pounded and well mixed.

Assemble and bake

  1. Place the ham in an oval-shaped raised crust.

  2. Lay a few bay leaves and slices of fat bacon over the top.

  3. Close the pie and bake for 4 to 5 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. Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Mace + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  4. Pepper + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,890 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  5. Mace + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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 pie and supplies the meaty flavour.
Forcemeat
Fills the space left by the bone, adding moisture and richness to the filling.
Fat bacon
Lies over the top, basting the pie with fat as it bakes.

The step that matters

Close the pie and bake for 4 to 5 hours. A long, slow bake lets the ham heat through and tenderise without drying out. The crust must be sealed well so steam and juices stay in the pie and the filling stays moist.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Allspicefits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Cardamomfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against ham, pepper, cinnamon, 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.

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesYorkshire PuddingYorkshire Pudding264 recipes