Roasted Ham
Soak the ham until it is softened, then put it into a deep pan, and pour over it a bottle of madeira, or any light wine, and with it 4 carrots, 4 onions, and 1 dozen peppercorns. Turn it over every two or three hours, and leave it until the following day. Drain it, put it into a hot oven, and baste liberally with the liquid in which it was soaked. It will require four or five hours to roast, according to the size. Take it up, skin, and glaze it; boil up the gravy, etc., which should be sent to table in a tureen. It is a good plan to boil the ham for an hour before it is put into the marinade, when, of course, it will not need to be roasted quite so long.
This is written for a whole dry-salted ham of the old kind: raw, heavily cured, and needing a long soak before it is fit to cook. Almost every supermarket ham sold today is already brined and fully cooked, which changes the whole method.
- Start with the right hamThe recipe assumes an uncooked, dry-cured ham that is salty enough to need soaking overnight or longer. A modern ready-to-eat ham needs neither soaking nor five hours of roasting; if you want to follow this method, look for a raw country ham or an uncooked bone-in fresh-cured ham.
- The soak"Until it is softened" means until the salt has drawn out enough to eat: 12 to 24 hours in cold water for a country ham, changing the water two or three times. Keep it refrigerated during the soak, not on the counter.
- Oven heatA "hot oven" in books of this period is usually taken as somewhere around 400-450F, which is too fierce to hold for four or five hours. Use it only for the first 20 minutes if you want colour, then drop to 325F for the long roast.
- Cook to temperature, not to the clockThe recipe gives four or five hours "according to the size" and names no weight, so the timing only makes sense for a large whole ham. Judge it with a thermometer instead: 145F at the thickest point, away from the bone, for a raw cured ham, rested 15 minutes before carving.
- A bottle of madeiraAbout 750 ml, which will not cover a large ham. Turn it as directed, or use a heavy plastic bag inside the pan so the wine surrounds the meat with less waste.
- The pre-boil is the better routeThe suggested hour of simmering first is genuinely worth doing with a very salty ham: it draws out more salt, shortens the roast (the recipe says only that it "will not need to be roasted quite so long"), and makes the skin easy to strip.
- Skinning and glazingTake the skin off while the ham is hot, leaving the fat. "Glaze" in this period could mean either a reduced-stock glaze or a sugar one; if you use sugar, score the fat, brush it on and return the ham to a hot oven for 10-15 minutes to set, watching closely as sugar catches quickly.
- The gravyThe marinade has been in contact with raw meat, so it must come to a full boil before serving. Strain out the carrot, onion and peppercorns, skim the fat, and reduce it until it coats a spoon.
- YieldDepends on the size of ham, which the recipe does not state; a large whole bone-in ham will serve a crowd hot, with a good deal left for cold cuts.
Soaking a dry-cured ham, marinating it in wine and finishing it in the oven belongs to the era when hams were preserved with heavy salt and hung for months rather than injected with brine and pasteurised. Madeira was a common choice in nineteenth-century British and American kitchens: it was widely traded and keeps well once opened, which is why it turns up in marinades and gravies of the period. The instruction to boil the ham for an hour first is the practical cook's amendment, a simmer drawing out salt faster than a cold soak. The wording assumes a whole bone-in ham and a large household.