Ham to Broil
Cut the slices thin, take off the skin, place on a gridiron over a hot fire; turn them in one minute; the ham will cook sufficiently in two or three minutes. Serve with Picalilli. 1
A two-line method that assumes a coal fire and a slab of home-cured ham. The technique survives intact; only the equipment and the ham itself have changed.
- Gridiron over a hot fireA gridiron is a grated iron rack set directly over live coals. The modern equivalent is a ridged cast-iron grill pan over high heat, or a broiler element with the rack in the top position. Preheat until the pan smokes faintly before the ham touches it.
- How thin is thinThe recipe does not say. Something on the order of 1/8 to 1/4 inch would be consistent with two or three minutes being enough. A thick supermarket steak cut at 1/2 inch will need longer and will toughen before the fat renders; ask for it sliced thin or cut it yourself from a whole piece.
- The ham in questionMost likely a dry-cured, salty ham rather than the wet-cured, water-added ham sold in packets, though the recipe does not specify. If you are using a modern cooked ham, you are only browning it and warming it through, so a minute a side is ample.
- Take off the skinRind on a country ham will not soften over a hot fire and will curl the slice as it tightens. Trim it away but leave a border of fat, which renders and keeps the lean from drying.
- Turn once, at one minuteThe recipe calls for a single turn. Leave the slice alone until it releases from the metal.
- Soaking very salty hamOld dry-cured slices were sometimes soaked in milk or water for an hour beforehand to draw out salt. Worth doing if you taste a trimming and find it fierce; unnecessary with anything from a modern deli counter.
- PicalilliPiccalilli here is probably a mustard-and-vinegar pickle of chopped vegetables, though the name also covered sweeter chopped relishes. Any sharp mustard pickle or chowchow serves the same purpose, which is to cut the salt and fat.
- YieldThe original gives none. Reckon two thin slices per person for breakfast, three with eggs or fried apples.
Broiled ham was breakfast food, and the brevity of the instruction reflects how routine it was in an American kitchen with a cured ham on hand. Dry-curing was the ordinary way of keeping pork through the year before household refrigeration, and a whole ham was carved down over weeks: thin slices for the gridiron, the hock for beans, the bone for greens. Serving it with piccalilli follows the long-standing pairing of salt-cured pork with a sharp vinegar pickle, a habit inherited from British practice and kept up in American households. The stray "1" at the end appears to be a mark carried over from the printed page umber or cross-reference of some kind ather than part of the method.