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Ham, Hot, with Madeira
Boil a ham (see HAM, BOILED), and when it is done let it remain for twenty minutes in its liquor before serving. Place it on a dish, trim it, and dust a little sugar over it. Mix a glass of Madeira with an equal quantity of veal stock. Put the ham in a slow oven, and baste it with the Madeira-gravy to glaze it. Strain the gravy, skim off the fat, add a little more stock to it, and serve it separately. Garnish the ham with vegetables, such as green peas, spinach, artichoke bottoms, etc.
A finishing method rather than a full recipe: the ham is already cooked and boiled, and this is the glazing and saucing stage. Two things need translating — the vessel-based measurements and the fact that most hams sold today are not the raw, salt-cured joints Cassell assumed.
- A glass of MadeiraA wineglass in Victorian recipe books is usually reckoned at about 2 fl oz, though usage varies. Use the same volume of veal stock, so roughly half a cup of basting liquid in total.
- Slow oven300F/150C. The ham is fully cooked already; the oven is only there to dry the surface and set the glaze in successive thin coats, not to cook anything through.
- Twenty minutes in the liquorWorth doing. Letting the joint sit off the heat in its cooking water keeps it from drying at the edges while it firms up enough to skin and trim cleanly.
- Trim itStrip off the rind while the ham is still warm, leaving an even layer of fat. Cold rind clings and tears the fat with it.
- The sugar dustingA light dusting only — a tablespoon or two of caster or light brown sugar over the fat. It caramelises with the wine into the glaze; a thick crust of sugar will scorch before the ham colours.
- BastingBaste every 8–10 minutes for 30–45 minutes, spooning the pan liquid back over. The glaze builds in layers; a single pour at the start just runs off into the dish.
- Veal stockGenuine veal stock is now a specialist item. A good unsalted brown chicken stock is the closest ordinary substitute; avoid anything salted, since the ham contributes plenty.
- Modern hamSupermarket hams are usually sold cooked and wet-cured, and are far less salty than a Victorian dry-cured joint, so the preliminary boiling can be brief or skipped. Check the label before soaking or simmering.
- MadeiraA dry or medium Sercial or Verdelho suits the savoury sauce; the sweeter Bual and Malmsey styles will push the glaze towards candy against the sugar.
- ServingThe strained, skimmed gravy goes in a boat at the table, not over the ham, which would dull the glaze. A 4–5 lb boned joint serves ten to twelve.
Boiling a ham and then finishing it in the oven with wine belongs to the grand service of the nineteenth-century English kitchen, which took its vocabulary and much of its technique from France: the glazed ham on a dish, garnished with vegetables set around it and its sauce sent separately, is a set piece of that style. Madeira held a particular place in that cookery because it was fortified and travelled well, so it kept in a cellar or sideboard long after an opened table wine had turned, which made it one of several fortified wines commonly used in the kitchen for sauces, aspics and glazes. Veal stock is the other marker of the period, the base that gave sauces body before commercial stocks existed, and the reason a glaze of this kind sets to a shine as it cools. Cassell's Dictionary, published in parts from the 1870s onward, was aimed at households running on this French-inflected model but without a professional chef, which is why the entry assumes the reader has already boiled the ham elsewhere in the book and needs only the finishing.