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Baked Ham
Soak ham over night then wash and scrape it. Put it into cold water; let it come to boiling point then simmer for 2 hours. Let the ham cool in the water; then remove and draw off the skin. Bake in moderate oven for 2 hours; baste it frequently; using 1 cup of sherry wine, 2 spoonfuls at a time; then baste with melted Crisco. When done, cover with a paste made of browned flour and browned sugar moistened with sherry, and return to oven to brown.
A two-stage ham: a long simmer to draw out salt and set the meat, then a slow bake with a sherry glaze. The instructions assume a whole, heavily salt-cured ham of the sort that arrived from the grocer dusty and hard, which is the main thing that has changed.
- What kind of ham this isThe overnight soak and scrubbing suit a dry salt-cured country ham, still common in 1915, though commercially brine-cured hams were also widely sold by then. A modern supermarket "city ham" is wet-cured, mild and usually fully cooked, and needs no soaking at all. If you are working with a genuine country ham, the soak and the simmer both still apply.
- Weight is not givenThe recipe gives times without a size, but two hours of simmering plus two of baking suggests a large whole bone-in ham, perhaps 12 to 15 lb. For anything smaller, shorten both stages and judge the bake by internal temperature rather than the clock.
- Moderate oven350F. Some cooks prefer 325F for a long bake of this kind, which gives more time for the basting to build up without the sugar in the glaze catching.
- Internal temperatureTake the ham to 140F at the thickest part, away from the bone, if it has been cured and simmered. The recipe itself gives times only, with no thermometer check.
- CriscoThis book was published to promote Crisco, then a new hydrogenated vegetable shortening. Melted butter, or the ham's own rendered fat spooned from the pan, does the same job and tastes better.
- The bastingTwo spoonfuls at a time is the point of the instruction, not a fussy detail. A cup of sherry poured on at once runs straight into the pan and steams; applied in small amounts every ten or fifteen minutes, it reduces on the surface and lacquers.
- Browned flour and browned sugarThe flour is toasted dry in a pan or a low oven until nut-coloured; "browned sugar" most likely means sugar caramelised over heat rather than dry-toasted. Browned flour has almost no thickening power left, so the paste is for colour and flavour; expect a thin, spreadable coating rather than a stiff crust. Watch it closely at the end, as the sugar moistened with sherry will scorch in a few minutes.
- Skin and fatDraw the skin off while the ham is still slightly warm and it will peel cleanly. Leave a quarter-inch of fat behind and score it in diamonds before baking so the glaze has something to hold to.
- YieldA whole bone-in ham of this size serves 20 or more.
A Calendar of Dinners belongs to a genre of cookbook produced by manufacturers rather than publishers: Procter and Gamble issued it to find uses for Crisco, which had come on the market in 1911 and needed persuading into American kitchens still loyal to lard and butter. That accounts for the otherwise puzzling instruction to baste a ham with shortening. The method itself is much older than the book. Boiling a cured ham before roasting it was standard English and American practice for centuries, because dry-salt curing left the meat far saltier than anything sold today, and the simmer both softened it and pulled the salt down to something edible. The finishing paste of browned flour and sugar is an older style of glaze, generally taken to predate the pineapple-and-clove treatment that later took over the American Easter table.