Ham to Boil
Put a ham on the fire (weighing about twelve pounds) in a large quantity of water, and let it be an hour coming to a boil; let it boil slowly three hours, and as the water in the pot diminishes, replenish with boiling water; at the end of three hours take the ham from the pot; remove its skin, cover the ham with fine cracker crumbs and place before a moderate fire to brown; when browned, cover the outside of the ham with spots of pepper in diamonds, place a clove into each of these spots; put a ruffle of cut paper around the knuckle and serve with horseradish or sharp sauce.
A whole bone-in ham, simmered and then glazed dry with cracker crumbs rather than sugar. The method still works, but the ham you can buy today is a different animal from the one this recipe assumes.
- What kind of ham this isA twelve-pound ham in a book of this period meant a bone-in, hard-cured leg from a butcher or a home smokehouse, salty enough that three hours of boiling was as much about drawing out salt as cooking. Most supermarket hams today are wet-cured and sold fully cooked; they need warming through, not three hours of simmering. If you are working with a genuine dry-cured country ham, soak it 12 to 24 hours in cold water first, changing the water once or twice.
- "Let it boil slowly"The hinge of the recipe. A hard boil tightens and shreds the muscle fibres and leaches out flavour; hold the water at 180-185F, where it barely trembles. The hour-long climb to the boil is deliberate and worth keeping, since it heats the meat evenly to the bone.
- Cook to temperature, not the clockThree hours for a twelve-pound ham works out to about 15 minutes per pound of slow simmering, plus the hour spent coming to the boil, but verify with a thermometer in the thickest part, clear of the bone: 145F for a raw cured ham, 140F if you are only reheating a pre-cooked one.
- "A moderate fire to brown"The ham is set in front of the heat, not enclosed in it, and turned to colour evenly. Lacking a hearth, a moderate oven, uncovered, for 20 to 30 minutes will brown the crumbs, or a few minutes under the broiler if you watch it closely.
- Cracker crumbsFine crumbs from plain soda or water crackers, not sweet crackers and not seasoned breadcrumbs. They will adhere better if you leave the fat layer intact when you strip the skin and press the crumbs on while the ham is still hot and tacky.
- The diamonds and clovesLay the pepper on in spots arranged as a diamond lattice over the crumbed surface, using coarse black pepper, and press one whole clove into each spot. The recipe does not call for cutting the fat. Whole cloves are for looks and scent; take them out before eating.
- The paper ruffleA frill of folded paper wrapped around the exposed shank bone, purely ornamental and also a handle for carving. Any stiff white paper cut into a fringe and rolled will do.
- Yield and servingA twelve-pound bone-in ham serves 18 to 24. "Sharp sauce" here means a vinegar-based or mustard sauce; grated horseradish loosened with a little cream or vinegar is the usual partner. Save the cooking liquid for beans or split peas, tasting first for salt.
Boiling was a standard treatment for a whole cured ham, for the practical reason that curing left the meat far saltier than modern palates expect and a long simmer in fresh water pulled some of that salt back out. The finish here — skin off, crumbs on, browned before the fire, scored in diamonds and studded with clove — is often described as the dress ham of the Victorian and Edwardian sideboard, meant to be carried whole to a buffet or a sideboard and carved in front of guests, which is why the recipe ends with a paper ruffle rather than a plate. Cracker crumbs in place of a sugar-and-mustard glaze may point to the American household economy of the period, since crackers gave a crisp pale coat without the risk of a sugar glaze scorching over an open fire. Household books of this kind seem generally to have assumed the ham had been cured at home or bought whole from a local smokehouse, and the vagueness about salt reflects that no two hams behaved alike.