Best Spices for Ham: Cloves, Mustard and Glazes

Most hams come already cured, and many come fully cooked, so the spices you add are mainly for the glaze and the surface. USDA FSIS defines ham as the cured leg of pork, and a fully cooked ham needs no further cooking.¹ The classic seasonings are whole cloves studded into the fat, mustard, brown sugar or another sweetener, and warm spices such as allspice. This page covers what each one does, the glaze styles a named recipe offers side by side, and how hot a ham needs to get. Quantities appear only where a named recipe gives them.

At a glance

Seasoning	Job on the ham	Notes
Cloves, whole	Aroma; decorative studding	ATK: used to stud holiday hams²
Mustard (Dijon or dry)	Sharp, tangy contrast to the sugar	In most glazes in the Food Network recipe³
Brown sugar	Sweetness; caramelizes in the oven	Mustard-orange glaze³
Honey, maple syrup, fruit preserves	Alternative sweeteners	Other glaze options in the same recipe³
Apple cider	Fruity base, reduced	Apple-maple glaze³
Orange	Citrus aroma and juice	Mustard-orange glaze³
Allspice	Warm spice	Apple-maple glaze³
Chinese five-spice	Warm, anise-led blend	Hoisin-spice glaze³
Horseradish	Sharp condiment on the side	Austrian Easter ham⁴

Know your ham first

How much you season, and how long you heat, depends on the type. FSIS’s definitions:¹

Type	What it is	Cook or reheat to
Fresh ham	Uncured leg of pork	145°F, then rest at least 3 minutes¹⁵
Cook-before-eating ham	Cured but not cooked at the plant	145°F, then rest at least 3 minutes⁵
Fully cooked ham, packaged in a USDA-inspected plant	Cooked at the plant	Reheat to 140°F; vacuum-packed whole or half hams and canned hams can also be eaten cold¹⁵
Fully cooked ham, any other	Cooked but not packaged under USDA inspection	Reheat to 165°F¹⁵
Country ham	Dry-cured; salty	FSIS suggests soaking 4 to 12 hours or longer in the refrigerator to cut the salt before cooking¹

Dry curing produces a salty product, FSIS notes.¹ That saltiness is why most ham seasonings are sweet or sharp rather than salty.

Spiral-cut cooked hams are safe to eat cold, and FSIS says they are best served that way, since heating a sliced ham can make the glaze melt and run off the meat.¹

The classic ham spices

Cloves: studded into the fat

Cloves are the dried flower buds of Syzygium aromaticum, an evergreen tree whose native range Kew gives as Maluku (the Moluccas).⁶⁷⁸ Britannica describes them as strong in aroma and hot and pungent in taste, and notes they flavor many foods, particularly meats and baked goods.⁷ America’s Test Kitchen lists studding holiday hams among the uses for whole cloves.²

Studding works with scored fat. The Food Network Kitchen recipe scores the fat in a 1-inch crosshatch pattern, then pins orange slices to the ham with 1 or 2 cloves each.³ Pressing a clove into each intersection of the scored diamonds is the more common decorative version; that is kitchen practice. Ground cloves rubbed over the surface are an alternative, but ATK warns that ground cloves are potent and uses them sparingly.² See ground vs. whole cloves, cooking with cloves and too much clove.

Mustard: the sharp half of the glaze

McCormick describes ground mustard’s taste as sharp, hot and slightly bitter, and lists a honey glazed ham among its recipes.⁹ Prepared mustard works too: the Food Network Kitchen mustard-orange glaze uses 1/2 cup Dijon, and its pineapple-apricot glaze uses 1/4 cup.³ McCormick says Dijon is the best substitute for ground mustard because they are similar in flavor.⁹ See mustard powder vs. prepared mustard and mustard powder uses.

Brown sugar and other sweeteners: the glaze

Brown sugar is the base of the mustard-orange glaze (3/4 cup packed light brown sugar, whisked with Dijon and orange juice), which is brushed on in stages until it caramelizes.³ The same recipe offers honey (3 tablespoons in a hoisin-spice glaze), maple syrup and apple jelly, and apricot preserves as other sweeteners.³ The sweet-against-salty logic is common practice rather than something these sources test.

Apple cider and orange

The apple-maple glaze starts from 2 cups of apple cider reduced to 1/2 cup.³ The mustard-orange version uses a whole orange, sliced and pinned to the ham, plus the juice of two more.³ Orange zest is a reasonable addition to any glaze, but none of the sources we opened specifies it.

Allspice and other warm spices

Allspice is named for a flavor that resembles cinnamon, cloves and nutmeg combined.¹⁰ It is the defining spice of Jamaican jerk, alongside Scotch bonnet pepper.¹¹ In the Food Network apple-maple ham glaze, 1/2 teaspoon allspice joins nutmeg and whole-grain mustard.³ The hoisin-spice glaze uses 2 teaspoons of five-spice powder, toasted in oil first.³ See allspice vs. cloves and too much allspice.

Glaze styles side by side

All four come from one named recipe, Food Network Kitchen’s Mustard-Orange Glazed Ham, written for a 10- to 12-pound fully cooked bone-in half ham.³

Glaze	Sweet	Sharp or sour	Spice
Mustard-orange	3/4 cup light brown sugar	1/2 cup Dijon; juice of 2 oranges	Whole cloves to pin orange slices
Apple-maple	1/2 cup maple syrup, 1/2 cup apple jelly, cider	1/4 cup whole-grain mustard	1/2 tsp allspice, 1/4 tsp nutmeg
Hoisin-spice	1 cup hoisin, 3 tbsp honey	3 tbsp rice vinegar, 1 tbsp soy sauce	2 tsp five-spice powder
Pineapple-apricot	1 cup apricot preserves, 2 cups pineapple juice	1/4 cup Dijon; lime zest and juice	8 thin slices ginger

The recipe brushes the glaze on during the last stretch of baking and stops when the glaze is caramelized and the ham registers 140°F,³ which matches FSIS’s reheating temperature for a plant-packaged cooked ham.⁵

Beyond the glaze

In Austria, Katzer notes, cured ham with horseradish is a traditional Easter meal.⁴ See horseradish and Christmas spices.

“Hams and Food Safety”, USDA Food Safety and Inspection Service. fsis.usda.gov · Regulator ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸
“Getting to Know: Baking Spices”, America’s Test Kitchen. americastestkitchen.com · Publication ↩ ↩² ↩³
“Mustard-Orange Glazed Ham”, Food Network Kitchen, Food Network Magazine. foodnetwork.com · Publication ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸ ↩⁹ ↩¹⁰ ↩¹¹ ↩¹² ↩¹³ ↩¹⁴ ↩¹⁵ ↩¹⁶ ↩¹⁷
“Horseradish”, Gernot Katzer’s Spice Pages. gernot-katzers-spice-pages.com · Reference work ↩ ↩²
“Safe Minimum Internal Temperature Chart”, USDA Food Safety and Inspection Service, 2025. fsis.usda.gov · Regulator ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵
“Syzygium aromaticum (L.) Merr. & L.M.Perry”, Plants of the World Online, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. powo.science.kew.org · Reference work ↩
“Clove”, Encyclopaedia Britannica. britannica.com · Reference work ↩ ↩²
E.W.M. Verheij and C.H.A. Snijders, “Syzygium aromaticum”, PROSEA. uses.plantnet-project.org · Reference work ↩
“About Ground Mustard: Uses, Pairings and Substitutes”, McCormick. mccormick.com · Merchant ↩ ↩²
“Allspice”, Encyclopaedia Britannica. britannica.com · Reference work ↩
Vaughn Stafford Gray, “A Brief History of Jamaican Jerk”, Smithsonian Magazine, 2020. smithsonianmag.com · Publication ↩

The Best Spices for Ham: Cloves, Mustard, Brown Sugar and the Glaze That Ties Them Together