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Westphalia Ham A L'Essence
Trim and remove the thigh bone from a Westphalia ham, soak in cold water two or three days, then boil it in water for an hour; after washing in cold water put in a large braising pan, with two carrots, two onions, a head of celery, a bouquet of herbs, namely: parsley, green onions, thyme, sweet basil, bay leaf, also four cloves and two blades of mace; moisten with two glasses of brandy, half a bottle of sherry, and enough broth to float the ham, then set the ham to simmer very slowly five or six hours. When the ham is braised sufficiently tender, and allowed to remain in its liquor an hour or more, drain it on to a dish, divest it of the rind, trim off the fat smooth, to give it a neat appearance.
Glaze the ham, replace it in the oven again for five minutes; glaze it once more, and place it on its dish; garnish it round with asparagus-peas, carrots, or spinach, with Espagnole sauce mixed with a glass of sherry, and about a pint of the liquor in which the ham has been braised; place a ruffle on the bone and send to table.
A grand-service braised ham of the kind meant to be carried whole to the table and carved there. Nearly everything in it still works; what has changed is the ham itself, the meaning of "glaze", and the fact that a three-day soak now belongs in the refrigerator.
- The ham you cannot buyWestphalia ham today means a dry-cured, cold-smoked product sold in paper-thin slices, not a whole raw leg for braising. Substitute a bone-in dry-cured country ham or an uncooked smoked gammon of 12-15 lb; a supermarket "fully cooked" ham has already been brined and cooked and will fall apart under six hours of simmering.
- Soak cold, and mean coldThe two- or three-day soak draws salt out of a hard-cured leg and is still necessary for a genuine country ham. Do it in the refrigerator, changing the water twice a day; a ham sitting in standing water on a kitchen bench for three days is a different proposition in a heated modern house than in an unheated 1900 larder.
- Glasses of brandy and sherryA "glass" in this period is a wineglass, most often reckoned at about 2 fl oz, though usage was not consistent, so the original is genuinely ambiguous. Half a cup of brandy and half a bottle (about 12 fl oz) of a dry oloroso or amontillado sherry sits comfortably in the intended range.
- Braise, do not boilThe hinge of the dish is the word "simmer very slowly". At a rolling boil the muscle fibres tighten and the ham goes stringy and dry. Keep the liquid at a bare shiver, or set the covered braising pan in a 300F oven, which holds the temperature far more steadily than a burner.
- Cook to temperature, not to the clockFive or six hours suits a large leg; a smaller gammon may be tender in three. Judge by a probe reading 160F at the thickest point and by a skewer sliding out with no resistance. The hour resting in its own liquor is not padding, it lets the meat reabsorb juices and makes the ham far easier to skin and trim.
- "Glaze" means meat glazeNot sugar and mustard. Glaze here is glace de viande: braising liquor strained, degreased and reduced to a syrupy, tacky consistency, brushed on in two coats with five minutes in a hot oven between them -- the recipe specifies no temperature. The result is a dark lacquer, savoury rather than sweet.
- Espagnole and the sauceEspagnole is the brown mother sauce, a roux-based veal or beef stock sauce. If you are not making one, a well-reduced brown stock lightly thickened will carry the glass of sherry and the pint of braising liquor perfectly well; taste before adding salt, as the ham liquor will already be saline.
- Garnish and ruffle"Asparagus-peas" means asparagus tips cut short, not the winged pea. The ruffle is a paper frill slipped over the exposed shank bone as a handle for carving, purely a service flourish.
- YieldA whole braised leg of this size serves 20 or more at table and is intended to go on serving cold for days afterwards.
Westphalian ham takes its name from the region of north-western Germany where pigs were traditionally fattened on beech mast and acorns and the hams cured and then cold-smoked slowly over beechwood and juniper. By the nineteenth century the name carried enough prestige in Britain, France and America that it appeared on menus much as Parma or Bayonne does now, and cookbooks of the period used it as a shorthand for the finest available leg. The treatment here is straight from French professional practice: a l'essence is usually read as signalling a braise in an aromatic, wine-fortified liquor whose reduction becomes both the glaze and the base of the sauce, and the sequence of trimming, glazing twice, garnishing and fixing a paper ruffle to the bone belongs to a style of service in which a showpiece joint was displayed whole before being carved. Its presence in a household book of the period reflects the era's habit of printing hotel and club cookery alongside plain family dishes, on the understanding that a hostess with help in the kitchen might attempt it, and everyone else could read it.