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Ham with Currant Jelly

Ham with currant jelly is a dish of boiled ham slices heated in a sauce of currant jelly, butter, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and ham are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,475 recipes. Both carry trans-2-decenal, which smells waxy, orange. The science ↓

Ham with Currant Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a saucepan, combine currant jelly, butter, and pepper and heat until the jelly is hot.

  2. Add the ham slices and heat through, about 2-3 minutes.

  3. Serve immediately on a hot dish.

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 + hamtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,475 recipes

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

  2. Currant + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,856 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  3. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  4. Pepper + hamtop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Currant + peppertop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,345 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

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

What each ingredient does

Currant jelly
Provides sweetness and fruity acidity, and melts into the glaze that coats the ham.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, helping the glaze turn smooth and glossy as it heats.
Boiled ham
Serves as the main protein, warmed through in the jelly glaze without being cooked further.

The step that matters

Heating the ham in the glaze. Ham is already cooked, so it only needs to warm through. Heating it briefly keeps it moist and tender, while overheating can make the meat dry and tough.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Lemonfits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Pineapplefits better
  4. Currantthe original

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