Skip to main content
Main

Boiled Ham

A ham cooked slowly in water with spices, then coated in egg and breadcrumbs and baked.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Clove and mace are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,400 recipes. Both carry methyleugenol, which smells clove, spice. The science ↓

Boiled Ham

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Soak the ham overnight and wash it carefully, removing any rust or mold.

  2. Place the ham in a large pot and cover it with cold water.

  3. Add the bay leaf, cloves, mace, sugar, and fresh hay if using.

Cook

  1. Heat the water gradually, ensuring it does not boil for at least two hours.

  2. Simmer gently for 15 minutes per pound of ham.

Cool, coat and brown

  1. Allow the ham to cool in the cooking liquid, keeping the skin on until completely cold.

  2. Brush the ham with beaten egg and coat it thickly with bread crumbs or cracker dust.

  3. Brown the ham in a 400°F (200°C) oven.

Garnish and serve

  1. Garnish with a frill of paper around the bone and serve with watercress or parsley.

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 + macetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  2. Ham + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  3. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  4. Ham + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,526 recipes

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

  5. Clove + breadtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,129 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

What each ingredient does

Ham
Provides the main meat, whose gentle cooking keeps it moist and tender.
Sugar
Adds a little sweetness that supports browning of the finished ham surface.
Beaten egg
Acts as a glue so the bread crumbs or cracker dust stick to the ham.
Bread crumbs or cracker dust
Forms a crisp, golden coating that browns in the oven.

The step that matters

Heat the water gradually and keep it from boiling. Boiling toughens the meat fibers and makes the ham dry and stringy, so it should heat slowly and simmer gently.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (ham, clove, sugar, egg, bread):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against ham, clove, sugar, egg, bread. 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

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipesBread OmeletteBread Omelette60 recipesOatmeal BreadOatmeal Bread51 recipes