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Baked Ham or Tongues
Boil the ham and grate some powdered cracker thickly over it; first rubbing it with beaten yolk of egg. Bake with butter. Lay slices of currant jelly around the tongue, and garnish the ham with parsley.--Mrs. R. Backed Ham.
Most persons boil ham, but it is much better if baked properly. Soak it for an hour in clean water and wipe dry; next spread it all over with a thin batter, put it into a deep dish with sticks under it to keep it out of the gravy. When it is fully done, take off the skin and batter crusted upon the flesh side and set it away to cool.--Mrs. B. J. B.
Two methods from two contributors: a boiled ham finished under a crumb crust, and a whole ham baked under a flour paste. Both assume a dry salt-cured Virginia ham, which behaves nothing like the wet-cured supermarket ham of today.
- Know which ham you haveA country ham is salt-cured, air-dried and raw; it needs long soaking and a full cook. A modern supermarket ham is brine-cured and already cooked, so it only needs reheating and the crumb or paste crust for colour.
- An hour of soaking is not enoughStandard practice for a genuine dry-cured ham is 12 to 24 hours in cold water, changed several times, before any cooking. One hour will leave it aggressively salty. Scrub off surface mould first; it is normal on aged country ham.
- Oven temperatureNeither writer gives one. Bake at 325F, allowing roughly 20 minutes per pound for a ham that has been boiled first, and closer to 25 minutes per pound for a raw soaked ham. Cook to 160F at the centre for raw country ham; 140F is enough to reheat a cooked one.
- The batter is a paste, not a coating to eatMrs. B. J. B.'s "thin batter" is a flour-and-water sheath that seals the meat and is discarded with the skin along with the rind. The original calls it thin, so mix it only thick enough to cling to the ham; it will bake to a hard shell.
- Sticks under itThe sticks keep the ham clear of the rendering fat and drippings so the underside does not stew. A wire rack in a deep roasting pan does the same job.
- Powdered crackerPeriod cracker crumbs come from plain hard water crackers, not sweetened or salted snack crackers. Fine dry breadcrumbs are the closest substitute. Brush the fat side with beaten yolk, press the crumbs on thickly, dot with butter and bake at 400F for 15 to 20 minutes to set the crust.
- TongueBeef tongue must be simmered until a skewer slides in easily, roughly 3 hours for a 3 lb tongue, then peeled while still hot; the skin will not come away once it cools. The title implies the same crumb treatment could be given to tongue, though the recipe text applies it only to the ham and mentions tongue only in the garnish.
- Cooling"Set it away to cool" suggests the ham was meant to be served cold and sliced thin. Cool it uncovered no more than two hours at room temperature, then refrigerate.
- YieldA whole country ham runs 12 to 16 lb bone-in and will serve 20 or more as a sliced cold dish.
Housekeeping in Old Virginia, compiled by Marion Cabell Tyree in 1878, is a collection of contributions from named Virginia housewives, which is why this page carries two competing methods signed by different women and disagreeing with each other. The disagreement itself is the point: boiling was the default treatment for a salt-cured ham, and Mrs. B. J. B. is arguing a minority position that baking under a flour crust gives a better result. Dry salt-curing and long hanging were the standard way of keeping pork through a Southern year before mechanical refrigeration, and the hams of Smithfield and the surrounding counties had already built a reputation well before the Civil War. The flour-paste sheath is an old technique, used across European cookery for both hams and whole fish, to hold moisture in a long roast; the crust is broken off and thrown away. Currant jelly with tongue reflects the period's steady pairing of sharp-sweet preserves with cold cured meats.