Name: To Boil Ham or Shoulder
Ingredients: 1 ham; ½ cup baking molasses

Why it works: Ham and molasses work together. They rank in the top 38% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 55 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

To Boil Ham or Shoulder

Ingredients

1 ham
½ cup baking molasses

Directions

Boil the ham

Put the ham in boiling water.
Boil for about 5 hours.
After 2 hours, add ½ cup of baking molasses.

Cool

Once done, remove the kettle from the stove and let the ham cool in the water.

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 + molassestop 38% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together55 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Ham: The main cut of meat, which cooks through slowly in the simmering water.
Baking molasses: Adds sweetness, dark colour and a rich flavour to the ham and its cooking liquid.

“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.