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Ham, Fried, with Eggs
Cut the ham into slices of a uniform thickness, and, if it is very hard and salt, soak it for eight or ten minutes in hot water, then drain, and dry it in a cloth. Cut off the rind, put the slices in a scrupulously clean cold frying-pan, and turn them two or three times during cooking. Put them on a hot dish, and if the fat is in the least discoloured, poach the eggs separately (see EGGS, TO POACH). Break the eggs, taking care not to break the yolks, and slip them into the pan. Gather the whites over the yolks with two spoons, to shape the eggs like a ball. Take them up with a slicer, drain them from the fat, and place them on the ham. Serve as hot as possible. Time, seven or eight minutes to fry the ham. Probable cost, 1s. per pound, if a whole ham be bought; 1s. 2d., if purchased in a smaller quantity. Sufficient, a pound of ham and six eggs for three persons.
A dry-cured ham steak fried in its own fat, with eggs cooked in the drippings. The whole method turns on the state of the fat, and on ham that is far saltier than most of what is sold today.
- The hinge: watch the fatThe eggs are cooked in the rendered ham fat, so it has to stay clean. Once it darkens or picks up burnt salt and sugar from the cure, it will streak the whites and taste scorched, which is why the original tells you to poach the eggs separately instead.
- Cold pan, no added fatStarting the slices in an unheated pan lets the fat render out slowly rather than seizing and curling the edges. This is only sensible with a genuine dry-cured ham that carries a fat rim; a lean supermarket ham steak will need a spoonful of oil or butter.
- The soaking stepEight or ten minutes in hot water, and only if the ham is 'very hard and salt', as the recipe says. Wet-cured and mass-market hams today are nowhere near that salty and should not be soaked, or you will pull out flavour and leave the meat watery.
- Seven or eight minutesThe recipe gives no slice thickness, only that the slices be uniform; the timing implies something substantial rather than wafer-thin. Thin pre-sliced ham is done in two to three minutes a side, and past that it goes dry and leathery.
- "A slicer"A fish slice, i.e. a slotted turner. Any perforated spatula will do; the point is to drain the fat off the eggs before they meet the ham.
- Shaping the eggsGathering the whites over the yolks with two spoons gives a rounded egg rather than a flat lacy one. It works best with eggs that are genuinely fresh, so the whites hold together instead of feathering.
- Yield and costA pound of ham with six eggs for three people is a Victorian breakfast portion; two eggs each still reads normally, though the half-pound of ham per head is generous by modern habit. The prices in shillings per pound are period retail figures and carry no useful conversion.
Cassell's treats this as a plain instructional entry rather than a composed dish -- the cross-reference to EGGS, TO POACH shows an alphabetical dictionary arrangement -- which suggests how ordinary ham and eggs was on a British table by the late nineteenth century; the entry quotes a lower price, 1s. rather than 1s. 2d. a pound, for buying a whole ham. Dry salt-and-smoke curing was still a common way to keep pork through the year, and hard, heavily salted hams are the reason for the conditional soaking instruction that opens the recipe. Frying the eggs in the ham's own rendered fat belongs to the same economy of not wasting anything renderable.