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Baked Ham and Potatoes

A baked dish of sliced ham topped with seasoned potatoes and milk, baked until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Baked Ham and Potatoes

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.

Assemble

  1. Place the ham in a small buttered baking dish.

  2. Mix the sliced potatoes with flour, salt, and paprika.

  3. Spread the potato mixture on top of the ham.

  4. Dot the top with small bits of butter.

  5. Pour the milk over the dish.

Bake

  1. Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) for 1½ hours.

  2. Remove the cover for the last 15 minutes to brown the potatoes.

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

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

  2. Potato + milktop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + potatotop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,456 recipes

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

  5. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Sliced ham
Forms the base layer and supplies savory, salty meat flavor.
Potatoes
Form the starchy top layer that softens during baking and browns at the surface.
Milk
Provides liquid that cooks the potatoes gently and forms a creamy sauce.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the top layer brown during baking.
Flour
Lightly thickens the milk so the sauce becomes creamy rather than watery.

The step that matters

Remove the cover for the last 15 minutes. Uncovering lets surface moisture escape and heat reach the potatoes directly, so they brown instead of staying pale and steamed.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Potatothe original
  2. Leekfits about as well
  3. Shallotfits about as well
  4. Asparagusfits about as well

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