Name: Baked Ham
Ingredients: 1 small ham; 1 pint soft bread crumbs; ½ cup brown sugar; port or claret for basting

Why it works: Ham and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,536 recipes. Both carry 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline, which smells popcorn, roasted. The science ↓

Baked Ham

Ingredients

1 small ham
1 pint soft bread crumbs
½ cup brown sugar
port or claret for basting

Directions

Cook the ham

Boil the ham until a fork can be easily inserted.
Remove from heat and cut off all the skin.

Coat and bake

Mix the bread crumbs with the brown sugar.
Press the mixture firmly into the ham.
Place the ham in a pan.
Baste with port or claret.
Bake until browned.

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.

Ham + breadtop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,536 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).
Bread + sugartop 32% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together8,638 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Ham + sugartop 33% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together1,084 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

Bread crumbs: Form a coating that holds the sugar and browns on the ham's surface.
Brown sugar: Adds sweetness and helps the coating caramelise and brown in the oven.
Port or claret: Adds moisture and flavour to the surface while it bakes.

“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.