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York Ham, with Madeira (hot)
Cook a ham as explained in YORK HAM, TO BOIL. When it is done let it remain for twenty minutes in its liquor before serving. Then place it on a dish, skin it, trim it neatly, and dust a little sugar over it. Put a glass of Madeira in the dish and one of veal stock or clear gravy. Put the ham in a slow oven, and when it is brown keep basting it with the Madeira-gravy; strain the gravy, skim off the fat, and add a piece of demi-glaze. Garnish the ham with various vegetables, and serve the sauce separately.
A finishing method rather than a full recipe: the ham is already boiled, and this stage is about glazing it and building a sauce. Two things decide the result — the oven must stay low, and the skin must come off while the ham is still hot.
- Skin it hotThe rind peels away cleanly in one sheet while the ham is warm from its liquor, and fights you once it cools. The twenty minutes' rest in the cooking water, whatever else it does, leaves the skin pliable enough to lift.
- "A slow oven"The book gives no temperatures; a slow oven of the period corresponds to somewhere around 275-300F. The ham is fully cooked already; the oven is only setting the sugar and drying the surface to a gloss. Anything hotter will scorch the sugar and squeeze out the juices before colour develops.
- "A glass" of Madeira"Glass" is an imprecise measure: a wineglassful of the period is around 2 fl oz, a tumbler considerably more. For a whole ham, 1/2 cup each of Madeira and stock in the dish is a generous but workable reading. Use a dry or medium Madeira (Sercial or Verdelho); the sweet styles plus the dusted sugar will turn cloying.
- Demi-glazeDemi-glace: brown veal stock reduced with a little espagnole until it coats a spoon. A tablespoon or two of good reduced veal stock does the same job, and commercial demi-glace concentrate is an acceptable stand-in. It is there for body and shine, not flavour bulk.
- BastingThe pan liquid is shallow and will reduce fast even at so low a heat. Baste every 8 to 10 minutes and add a splash of stock if the dish threatens to go dry, or the sugar in the pan will catch and turn bitter. Reckon on 30 to 45 minutes for a good colour.
- York hamA large, dry-salt-cured leg, unsmoked or only lightly smoked, mild and pale. Any mild unsmoked bone-in cured ham will suit this treatment; a heavily smoked or honey-glazed supermarket ham will fight the Madeira.
- Reheating temperatureBring the centre back to 140-150F if the boiled ham has been allowed to go cold before glazing. Above that a cooked cured ham simply dries.
- ServingA whole York ham runs somewhere around 12-16 lb and serves a crowd; carved thin it will feed twenty or more. The "various vegetables" is left open; glazed carrots, turnips, peas and small potatoes would all suit the dish.
York ham took its name from the city, and its reputation from a curing style rather than a strict place of origin — a long dry salt cure, no smoke or only the lightest, and a slow maturation that leaves the meat firm and delicate enough to be eaten cold in thin slices. By the time Cassell's dictionary appeared in the late nineteenth century, York ham was a fixture of the English buffet and cold table, and this entry represents the other half of its career: dressed hot, in the French manner, with Madeira and demi-glace. That pairing of an English cured leg with an Anglo-French sauce is characteristic of the period's grand cookery, where a boiled ham became a centrepiece by being glazed, garnished and served with a sauce sent separately in a boat. Madeira held its place in such sauces partly because it is cooked and fortified, so barrels survived long sea voyages and warm cellars where table wines did not.