Skip to main content
Main

Boiled Ham

A ham soaked, boiled, and baked with maple syrup, flour, and optional spices.

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

Why it works: Clove and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,451 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Boiled Ham

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the ham

  1. Soak the ham in water overnight.

  2. Wash the ham with a coarse cloth or stiff brush, scrubbing thoroughly.

  3. Trim off the black edges of the ham.

  4. Scrape out any cracks in the ham.

Boil

  1. Place the ham in a pot with plenty of cold water.

  2. Bring the water slowly to a boil.

  3. Do not boil the ham for the first hour and a half.

  4. Increase the heat slightly after the first hour and a half.

  5. Skim the surface of the water.

  6. Boil steadily for 20 minutes per pound once boiling begins.

  7. Remove the ham from the pot.

Glaze and bake

  1. Carefully skin the ham.

  2. Make a paste with maple syrup and flour.

  3. Rub the paste over the ham.

  4. Bake the ham until nice and brown.

  5. Insert cloves into the fat of the ham.

  6. Alternatively, let the ham cool in the cooking liquid.

  7. Trim the ham after it has cooled.

  8. Carefully skin the ham after trimming.

  9. Spread a mixture of cracker crumbs, brown sugar, salt, and pepper over the ham.

  10. Moisten the ham with butter.

  11. Bake the ham until brown and crisp.

  12. Optionally add tarragon to the cracker crumbs and sugar.

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. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  2. Pepper + tarragontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,399 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Clove + tarragontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together548 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  4. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + tarragontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together788 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter 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

Maple syrup
Adds sweetness and helps the paste brown during baking.
Flour
Thickens the maple syrup into a paste that clings to the ham.
Cracker crumbs
Form a crisp, browned crust over the ham's surface.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the topping caramelise and brown.
Butter
Moistens the surface and adds fat that promotes browning.

The step that matters

Keep the water at a gentle simmer, not a hard boil. Boiling the ham too early or too hard can toughen the meat and split the skin. Holding back the heat for the first hour and a half keeps the ham tender and the fat intact.

Swap the tarragon

The recipe marks tarragon as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (ham, maple syrup, flour, clove, sugar, pepper, butter):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Allspicefits better
  4. Tarragonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against ham, maple syrup, flour, clove, sugar, pepper, butter. 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

Maple SauceMaple Sauce9 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipes