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Ham, Boiled
Soak the ham in several waters. If very hard and salt, twenty-four hours or more will be required; if not, from eight to twelve hours will suffice. Lukewarm water will soften it more quickly than cold. Scrub it well, and scrape off the rusty, discoloured parts, but do not cut the skin if it can be avoided. Put it into a large pot with plenty of cold water. If a bunch of sweet herbs, two or three carrots, and a bay-leaf are added, the flavour will be improved. Let it be brought to a boil very slowly skim it carefully, and simmer very gently until sufficiently cooked. If it is not intended to be kept any length of time and still not to be cut until cold, it may be left in the water for an hour after it is done enough: this will improve the taste of the ham, but it will render it less likely to keep. Lift it out by the knuckle to avoid sticking a fork into it. Take off the skin, strew over it some browned crumbs of bread, roll a frill of white paper round the knuckle, and send it to table on a dry, warm dish. If the ham is to be glazed, the bread-raspings must be omitted. Preserve the skin, and place it over the ham when it is put into the larder, as it will keep in the moisture. Time, for a new ham, twenty-five minutes to the pound is sufficient, counting from the time the water boils; for an old one, twenty-eight minutes. Add a quarter of an hour for every pound over twelve. A piece of ham six pounds in weight, three hours.
This is written for a whole dry-salt-cured ham of the sort that arrived from the grocer hard as a board and had to be soaked before it was edible. Almost nothing sold as "ham" today needs that treatment, so the first decision is what you actually have.
- Know your ham firstThe long soak is for genuinely dry-cured, unsoaked hams — a raw country ham, jambon de campagne, or a farm-cured leg. Supermarket gammon and wet-brined hams are far less salty and need no soak at all, or an hour or two at most. Soaking a modern gammon for a day leaches out flavour and leaves it watery.
- Soak cold, not lukewarmCassell's advice to use lukewarm water is sound chemistry and poor hygiene: eight to twenty-four hours at room temperature gives surface bacteria a long run. Soak in cold water in the refrigerator, changing it two or three times, and allow longer to compensate.
- Simmer, never boilThis is the hinge. The slow rise and the "simmer very gently" are what keep the muscle fibres from contracting and squeezing out moisture — water at a rolling boil produces dry, stringy ham every time. Hold the pot at roughly 180–190F, with the surface barely trembling.
- Cook to temperature, not the clockTwenty-five to twenty-eight minutes to the pound will overcook most hams available now. Use a thermometer in the thickest part, clear of the bone: 145–150F for a raw cured ham, and count on roughly 18–20 minutes per pound as a rough guide only. The stated three hours for a six-pound piece is generous.
- Resting in the liquidLeaving the cooked ham in its water for an hour is widely held to improve it, and the ham does stay moister cooling in the seasoned liquid. Cassell's warning that it will then keep less well is plausible: the extra moisture works against the drying effect of the cure. Do it only if you are eating the ham within a couple of days.
- Bread-raspingsThese are dry breadcrumbs toasted in the oven until deep brown, then sieved fine and pressed onto the hot fat. Panko is too coarse; use dried white crumbs browned at 325F and crushed. The paper frill round the knuckle is pure presentation and can be skipped.
- Do not use the larderReplacing the skin to hold in moisture is a good trick, but a cooled cooked ham belongs in the refrigerator, skin on, loosely wrapped. Nineteenth-century larders were cool, unheated rooms; a modern kitchen cupboard is not.
- YieldA bone-in ham gives roughly two to three servings per pound as a main course, and far more sliced thin for a cold table. A six-pound piece will feed twelve to fifteen at a buffet.
Boiling was the default treatment for a cured leg of pork throughout the age of dry-salting, for the plain reason that the cure had to be drawn back out: hams intended to survive a year in a larder carried far more salt than any palate wants, and hours in fresh water were the only remedy. Cassell's Dictionary of Cookery, compiled in the 1870s for households buying whole hams by name — York, Westphalia, Bradenham — treats this as basic technique rather than a dish. The finishing details are period markers of their own: bread-raspings and a paper frill were the standard dress for a cold ham on a Victorian sideboard or supper table, where it was expected to be carved from over several days, and the instruction to lift the ham by the knuckle rather than spear it with a fork is conventionally explained as a way of keeping the juices in.