Skip to main content
Main

Boast Ham

A ham roasted and basted with its own drippings, served with a flour‑water sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Ham and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 33% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,516 recipes. Both carry phenylacetaldehyde, which smells hawthorne, honey. The science ↓

Boast Ham

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the ham in tepid water overnight before roasting.

Roast

  1. Place the ham in front of a moderate fire and roast for 2 hours, turning frequently.

  2. Remove the ham from the heat, carefully take off the skin, and scrape the fat from the roaster.

  3. Return the ham to the roaster and roast for an additional 2 hours, basting often with the drippings.

  4. Once done, place the ham on a dish.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. In a saucepan, combine the drippings with 1 tablespoon of flour mixed in a teacup of water, and bring to a boil.

  2. Serve the sauce in a sauce tureen.

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. Ham + flourtop 33% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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 carries the flavor and juices during roasting.
Flour
Thickens the drippings into a smooth sauce when boiled with them.

The step that matters

Basting the ham with drippings during the second roast. Frequent basting keeps the surface moist and helps the drippings build color and flavor on the ham, while the fat is kept in the roaster for the sauce.

“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