Boiled Ham
Pour boiling water over it and let stand until cool enough to wash, scrape clean (some have a coarse hair-brush on purpose for cleaning hams), put in a thoroughly cleansed boiler with cold water enough to cover; bring to the boiling point and then place on back part of stove to simmer steadily for six or seven hours or till tender when pierced with a fork (if the ham weighs twelve pounds); be careful to keep water at boiling point, and not to allow it to go much above it. Turn the ham once or twice in the water; when done take up and put into a baking-pan to skin; dip the hands in cold water, take the skin between the fingers and peel as you would an orange; set in a moderate oven, placing the lean side of the ham downward, and if you like, sift over pounded or rolled crackers; bake one hour. The baking brings out a great quantity of fat, leaving the meat much more delicate, and in warm weather it will keep in a dry, cool place a long time; if there is a tendency to mold, set it a little while into the oven again. Or, after the ham is boiled and peeled, cover with the white of a raw egg, and sprinkle sugar or fine bread-crumbs over it; or cover with a regular cake-icing, place in the oven and brown; or, quarter two onions, stick whole allspice and black pepper in the quarters, with a knife make slits in the outside of the ham in which put the onions, place in drippingpan, lay parsley around, and bake till nicely browned. Or, after boiling and peeling, dust with sugar, and pass a hot knife over it until it forms a caramel glaze, and serve without baking. A still nicer way is to glaze with strong meat jelly or any savory jelly at hand, boiled down rapidly (taking great care to prevent burning) until it is like glue. Brush this jelly over the ham when cool, and it makes it an elegant dish. The nicest portion of a boiled ham may be served in slices, and the ragged parts and odds and ends chopped fine for sandwiches, or by adding three eggs to one pint of chopped ham a delicious omelet may be made. If the ham is very salt, it should lie in water over night.
This is written for a whole dry-cured country ham — salt-preserved, uncooked, hung in a smokehouse — not the wet-cured, fully-cooked ham sold in supermarkets today. Read the first point before anything else.
- Know which ham you haveA modern boneless or spiral-cut ham is already cooked and only lightly salted; six hours of simmering will reduce it to string. This procedure applies only to a whole uncooked dry-cured ham (a country ham from Virginia, Kentucky or Tennessee, or an equivalent salt-cured leg), which genuinely needs the soak, the long simmer and the finish in the oven.
- The overnight soak is not optionalThe overnight soak matters more than the recipe implies -- It is tucked in as a conditional at the very end, but for a heavily salt-cured ham it is close to essential. Twelve to twenty-four hours in cold water, changed two or three times, and it should be refrigerated while it soaks rather than left on a counter.
- "Keep water at boiling point" means a bare simmerThe instruction is contradictory by modern lights: bring to a boil, then move to the cool back of the range and hold it there. Aim for 180-190F, with the surface barely moving. A rolling boil tightens the muscle fibres and squeezes out juice.
- Cook to temperature, not to the clockSix to seven hours for a twelve-pound ham is a fair estimate for a bone-in cured leg, but the fork test is crude. A thermometer in the thickest part away from the bone should read about 160F before the ham comes out of the water.
- A moderate oven is 350FFor the hour of baking that follows, 325-350F is right. If you glaze with sugar, egg white and crumbs, or icing, watch it after twenty minutes — sugar on a hot ham colours fast.
- Skinning while hotThe orange-peel trick works, and works best while the ham is hot. Dipping the hands in cold water makes the heat bearable; a clean towel does the same job. Leave the fat layer on and score it if you want the glaze to hold.
- Pounded crackers and meat jellyRolled crackers are simply cracker crumbs, ground fine from plain water biscuits or unsalted crackers. The 'strong meat jelly' boiled to the consistency of glue is a classic meat glaze: well-reduced veal or beef stock, taken further until it sets tacky. A commercial demi-glace reduced down further is the nearest shortcut.
- Storage claims to ignoreThe line about keeping a long time in a dry, cool place, and returning a mouldy ham to the oven, belongs to a household with a cold cellar and different expectations. Refrigerate the cooked ham and use it within a week, or freeze it in slices.
- YieldA twelve-pound bone-in ham gives roughly 8-9 lb of edible meat — twenty or more servings, which is why the recipe ends by telling you what to do with the trimmings.
Buckeye Cookery (1877) was assembled in Ohio at a moment when many rural households still cured their own pork, and this entry reads like it: the ham arrives dirty and needing scrubbing with a dedicated brush, and may be so salt it has to sit in water overnight. The long simmer followed by an hour in the oven is a practical response to dry-curing — the water rehydrates and desalts, the oven renders out fat and firms the surface. What makes the entry characteristic of the book is the string of alternative finishes crowded into one paragraph: crumbs, egg white and sugar, a literal cake icing, onions studded with allspice, a hot-knife caramel, and a reduced meat glaze. That last is glace de viande, out of professional French practice, sitting here beside a farmhouse instruction to deal with mould by a stint in the oven. The final sentences — good slices to the table, ragged ends to sandwiches or an omelet of three eggs to a pint of chopped ham — are the period's real economy speaking.<br>