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Baked Sliced Ham

A baked ham slice with cloves, butter, and milk-soaked bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Baked Sliced Ham

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the ham

  1. Simmer the ham slice for 2 to 3 hours.

  2. Insert cloves and small pieces of butter into the ham.

Assemble and bake

  1. Soak soft bread in milk and spread it over the ham.

  2. Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) until brown.

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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

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

  4. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  5. Ham + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,475 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

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 dish and is already cooked by the long simmer.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, carrying flavour and keeping the ham moist as it heats.
Soft bread
Forms a soft topping layer that absorbs liquid and then browns in the oven.
Milk
Moistens the bread and its milk sugars and proteins help the topping brown.
Cloves
Contribute a warm, aromatic spice flavour pushed into the ham.

The step that matters

Bake until brown. The surface browns through Maillard reactions between milk proteins and sugars. If the oven runs too hot or the bake goes on too long, the top can scorch before the bread layer is set and heated through.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cinnamonfits about as well
  3. Parsleyfits about as well
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against ham, butter, bread, milk. 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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