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Ham, Fried, with Tomatoes
Cut the ham rather thin, and when cooked put it on one side to keep hot. Take the desired number of tomatoes, cut them in half, and fry them in the same fat as the ham. Sprinkle them with pepper and salt while they are cooking, and arrange them in the centre of a hot dish with the slices of ham round.
A two-pan-free breakfast dish that depends entirely on the ham fat left behind. The original assumes dry-cured ham cut from a whole joint, which behaves differently from wet-cured supermarket slices.
- "Rather thin"Aim for about 1/8 inch (3 mm). Dry-cured ham at that thickness needs only a minute or so per side; longer and it turns hard and leathery.
- The ham to buyThe word almost certainly covers a slice off a cured joint rather than modern sandwich ham; a gammon steak or a slice of country ham is the closer match. If using country ham, taste it before salting anything else in the dish.
- Fat in the panModern wet-cured ham renders very little and gives up water instead. If the pan is dry after the ham comes out, add a teaspoon of butter or oil rather than trying to fry tomatoes in nothing.
- Tomatoes cut side downStart them cut face down in the hot fat and leave them alone for three or four minutes to brown before turning. Moving them early breaks them up.
- Salt sparinglyThe recipe calls for pepper and salt on the tomatoes, but commercial ham fat is already salty; pepper freely, salt at the end if at all.
- Tomato choiceFirm medium tomatoes hold their shape; very ripe or very large ones collapse into the pan. Halved plum tomatoes are the safest option.
- Keeping the ham hotA plate in a 200F/95C oven, loosely covered, is enough for the few minutes the tomatoes take. A tightly covered plate steams the ham soft.
- YieldReckon on one thin slice and two tomatoes per person; the recipe scales directly.
Frying tomatoes in the ham fat is thrift rather than invention, the same logic that puts fried bread and mushrooms in the same pan on a British breakfast plate. Tomatoes had shifted over the nineteenth century from a suspect novelty to a familiar vegetable in Britain, and by the time this dictionary appeared they were evidently common enough to be treated without comment or explanation. The arrangement described, tomatoes heaped in the centre with the ham ringed around, suggests a dish composed for the table rather than served loose on the plate.