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SPANISH HAM (another way)
Soak the ham in cold water for a couple of days before cooking it. Take it up, scrape it well, trim it neatly, put it into a stewpan with as much cold water as will cover it, and let it boil gently for an hour. Clean and cut into small pieces a couple of carrots, two onions, and two shallots, and fry them in a little butter with a couple of bay-leaves, a sprig of thyme, a bunch of parsley, and a head of celery. Stir these ingredients over the fire until they are slightly coloured. Pour upon them as much boiling stock, or, failing this, boiling water, as will cover the ham, and add three or four cloves, half a blade of mace, and a dozen peppercorns. A glassful of light wine may be added, or not. Simmer the ham in the liquor thus prepared till it is done enough, and let it remain in it till cold. Take it up, trim it in the usual way, and either brush it over with liquid glaze or cover it with bread-raspings. Spanish hams are of three sorts--Bayonne, Montauches, and Grenada. Time to simmer the ham in the stock, about four hours. Cost, uncertain.
A two-stage boiled ham: a plain first boil to draw out salt, then a long simmer in an aromatic broth. The hinge is the soaking and the first blanch — everything else is seasoning.
- Which ham this assumesA whole dry-salted, air-cured leg on the bone, uncooked and very salty. A modern wet-cured or ready-cooked supermarket ham needs none of this treatment; use an uncooked bone-in gammon or country ham if you want the recipe to behave as written.
- The two-day soakNot optional with a genuine dry-cured ham, and change the water two or three times a day, keeping it cold. With a mild commercial gammon, overnight is plenty, and the hour-long preliminary boil can be shortened to a 20-minute blanch or skipped.
- StewpanIn this book a stewpan is simply a deep saucepan or stockpot. For a whole ham you need a vessel large enough to cover it with liquid — roughly 12 quarts or more.
- "Till it is done enough"About four hours is given (on top of the preliminary hour's boil), which suits a leg of roughly 10-12 lb at a bare simmer, around 20-25 minutes per pound. The traditional test is that the small bone at the shank end twists free; a thermometer is the reliable version — 145F at the thickest point is the modern minimum, though hams simmered this way are usually taken higher.
- Never let it boil hardAfter the first blanch the liquid should barely tremble. A rolling boil tightens the muscle fibres and squeezes out moisture, and a large ham cooked that way carves dry no matter how long it then sits in the broth.
- Cooling in the liquorLeaving the ham in its stock until cold is what makes it juicy and seasons it through. Do it in a cold place and get the pot into refrigeration once it has dropped below hand-hot rather than leaving it out overnight.
- Blade of maceThe lacy outer covering of nutmeg, sold as blades or ground. Half a blade is about a quarter teaspoon of ground mace; add it in a spice bag or muslin with the cloves and peppercorns for easy removal.
- Glaze and bread-raspingsLiquid glaze is reduced, clarified stock or aspic brushed on as it sets. Bread-raspings are crusts dried hard in a low oven and grated to a fine sandy crumb — dry, toasted breadcrumbs are the modern equivalent, patted onto the trimmed fat.
- YieldA 10 lb bone-in ham serves 15-20 as a cold cut, and the strained cooking liquor makes an excellent basis for pea or lentil soup, though it will need no further salt.
Cassell's confidence here outruns its geography: Bayonne is in the French Basque country, not Spain. What the passage does record accurately is how Victorian English kitchens handled any imported dry-cured leg — Spanish, Bayonne, or Westphalian alike. Such hams were salted and air-dried for months to survive transport without refrigeration, arriving hard and fiercely salty, so the long soak and preliminary boil were the price of admission. The subsequent simmer in a mirepoix-based broth with cloves, mace and a glass of wine is standard nineteenth-century braise practice, and finishing a cold ham with either a savoury glaze or a coat of raspings was the ordinary way of presenting one on a cold buffet or supper table. That eating these hams raw in thin slices was the point in Spain itself seems not to have occurred to the compilers.