Boned Ham
Having soaked a well-cured ham in tepid water over night, boil it till perfectly tender, putting it on in warm water; take up in a wooden tray, let cool, remove bone carefully, press the ham again into shape, return to boiling liquor, remove pot from fire, and let the ham remain in it till cold. Cut across and serve cold. - Miss L. L. Richmond.
A straightforward method for a cold boiled ham, boned and re-pressed so it slices cleanly. It assumes a hard, heavily salted country ham rather than anything sold ready-cooked today.
- The hinge: bone it while warmThe hinge: bone it warm, not cold -- the recipe says to let the ham cool, but only far enough to handle. The bone generally lifts out most easily while the meat is still warm and pliable; left until fully cold it tends to be harder to free without tearing the muscle.
- "Well-cured" means saltyThe overnight soak exists because a dry-salt country ham of the period could be aggressively salty. A modern brine-cured supermarket ham needs no soaking at all, and most are sold already fully cooked, which makes this method redundant for them. Use a raw, uncooked, dry-cured or country ham if you want the recipe to make sense.
- Boil means simmerBring it up in warm water as directed but hold the pot at a bare shiver rather than a rolling boil, which shreds the outer inch of muscle long before the centre is tender. The book gives no times or temperatures; as a modern guide, reckon roughly 20-25 minutes per pound and judge by tenderness, since a ham that is to be boned wants to go well past the minimum safe internal temperature.
- Wooden traySimply a large shallow wooden trough used as a draining and working surface. A rimmed sheet pan or a large cutting board with a groove does the same job.
- Pressing it back into shapeThe book leaves this vague. Wrap the boned ham tightly in a cloth or several layers of plastic, tie it, and let the return to the hot liquor plus its own gelatine set the shape. A ham press or a loaf tin with a weighted board on top gives a squarer, easier-slicing block.
- Cooling in the liquorThis keeps the meat moist and is the reason the ham is not dry the next day, but a full pot of stock takes many hours to pass through the temperature range where bacteria multiply. Cool it in a sink of iced water, or lift the ham out once the liquor is lukewarm and refrigerate it wrapped, then chill the stock separately.
- Serving"Cut across" means slicing the pressed ham crosswise into rounds rather than carving along the bone line. Chill thoroughly first; cold ham cut thin holds together, warm ham crumbles.
- YieldThe recipe gives no size. A 10-12 lb ham loses a good deal to bone and rendered fat but should still serve twenty or more as a cold cut. The cooking liquor, if not desperately salty, is worth keeping for bean soup.
Buckeye Cookery (1877) came out of Ohio at a time when many rural households still cured their own pork, and a ham was a fixture that had to keep and be eaten cold over weeks. Boning and pressing a boiled ham turned an awkward bone-in joint into a compact block that could be sliced evenly and laid out on a supper table or packed for travel. The attribution to Miss L. L. Richmond is typical of the book, which was assembled from contributions by named women and reads as a record of what a particular community actually cooked. Note also the wooden tray, the pot left standing off the fire, and the total absence of times and temperatures - "boil it till perfectly tender" was all the instruction a cook was expected to need.