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Ham Scallops
Cut a pound of ham in scallops a quarter of an inch thick, three inches long, and two broad. Fry them in hot butter until lightly browned on each side, drain them from the fat, and put them on a hot dish. Pick the leaves from a sprig of young parsley, wash it in two or three waters, chop it small, and put a table-spoonful into a saucepan, with three ounces of fresh butter, a little pepper and salt, and a table-spoonful of lemon-juice. Put the mixture on the hob, not on the fire, and keep stirring until it is as thick as custard. Pour it over the scallops, and serve. Time, six minutes to fry the ham. Probable cost, 1s. or 1s. 2d. per pound. Sufficient for three persons.
A plate of fried ham under a warm parsley-lemon butter. The whole dish stands or falls on the sauce, which is an emulsion and will break if it gets too hot.
- "Scallops" here are not shellfishThe word is used in its older sense of a thin flat slice — an escalope. Cut across the grain, a quarter inch thick, roughly 3 by 2 inches.
- "On the hob, not on the fire"The hob was the shelf at the side of a coal range, warm but not directly heated. On a modern stove this means the lowest setting or a pan set off the heat entirely. The butter must soften and thicken to the consistency of custard without ever bubbling; once it boils it splits into oil and milky liquid.
- WeightsThree ounces of butter is about 85 g, six tablespoons. Against one pound (450 g) of ham that is a generous amount of sauce, which is the point — it is dressing, not gravy.
- What kind of hamA Victorian kitchen would most likely have been cutting from a whole cooked or dry-cured ham on the bone. Thick-cut supermarket cooked ham works; a piece of gammon or country ham needs longer than six minutes and will be much saltier, so hold back the salt in the butter.
- Six minutes means six minutesCured ham is already cooked or cured through. Frying past a light browning on each side dries it and turns the edges hard. Cook in batches so the pan stays hot rather than crowding it.
- ParsleyFlat-leaf or curly both work. Washing "in two or three waters" removed grit from field-grown bunches; a single rinse is usually enough now, but dry the leaves well or the water will thin the butter.
- YieldThree portions as written, as a light dish. Serve on a hot plate — the sauce sets if the plate is cold.
This is essentially fried ham under maître d'hôtel butter, the parsley-and-lemon compound butter that ran through nineteenth-century English and French cooking and turned up on grilled steaks, fish and chops alike. The costing — a shilling or so a pound — suggests a period when a whole ham could be a standing resource in a middle-class kitchen, carved for a joint at first and then worked down through slices, scallops, mince and finally the stockpot. The instruction to keep the pan off the fire is a reminder of how coal ranges were actually used, with cooks reading heat by position rather than by dial.