Ham and Eggs
Slice the ham rather thick. Fry in a hot pan. Before it becomes hard, take from the pan and lay in a dish over a vessel of hot water. Let the pan remain on the fire, so as to keep the ham gravy hot, that it may cook the eggs nicely when dropped into it. Break the eggs carefully, drop them in whole, and do not let them touch each other. Cook a light brown, not allowing the yolks to get hard. Lay an egg on each slice of meat. Mrs. S. T. HAM AND EGG PUDDING. (A Spring Dish.) 6 eggs beaten very light. A light pint of flour. A pint of milk. A small piece of butter. Salt and pepper to the taste.
Sprinkle some slices of boiled ham (both fat and lean) with pepper, and lay them across a deep dish that has been greased. Then pour the pudding batter over the bacon and bake quickly. Mrs. V. P. M.
Two related dishes: a fried ham and egg breakfast, and a baked batter pudding built on the same pairing. Both assume Virginia country ham — dry-cured, hard, and very salty — rather than the wet-cured deli ham sold today.
- The hinge: don't overcook the hamCountry ham slices go from tender to leathery in under a minute of extra heat. The instruction to pull it "before it becomes hard" and hold it over hot water is the whole technique; the pan stays on the fire only to keep the rendered fat hot for the eggs.
- What kind of hamSlice a dry-cured country ham about 1/4 inch thick — "rather thick" by the standards of a hand-carved joint. Supermarket wet-cured ham has far more water, will steam rather than fry, and gives little fat for the eggs; if that is what you have, add a spoonful of butter or lard to the pan.
- SaltAn aged country ham can be aggressively salty, and slices were sometimes soaked or blanched briefly before frying. Note that the pudding recipe does call for salt and pepper to taste, so judge it against the saltiness of the ham you are using.
- Frying the eggsHam fat runs hot and smokes early. Keep the pan at moderate heat so the whites set and colour lightly while the yolks stay soft — a genuinely brown, crisp-edged egg happens fast in rendered ham fat.
- "A light pint of flour"A pint measured loosely, not packed or shaken down — roughly 2 cups, and on the generous side of scant. Spoon the flour into the cup rather than scooping.
- "Bake quickly"This calls for a hot oven; modern equivalents for a nineteenth-century quick oven usually fall somewhere around 400-450F, though the recipe gives no figure. The batter is close to a popover or Yorkshire pudding mixture and wants that heat to rise, so grease the deep dish well.
- "The bacon"The second recipe says ham in one line and bacon in the next. 'Bacon' was often used loosely in nineteenth-century Southern writing for cured hog meat in general; either way, use the boiled ham slices the recipe opens with.
- YieldA pint of flour, a pint of milk and six eggs will fill a large deep baking dish and serve roughly six. Serve it straight from the oven, as batter puddings settle as they cool.
Housekeeping in Old Virginia, compiled by Marion Cabell Tyree and published in 1878, gathered contributions from some 250 Virginia housewives, which is why these two recipes carry different sets of initials and different voices. Ham and eggs needed no explanation to that readership: the dry-cured hams of the upper South were a household staple, hung and aged for months, and a breakfast plate built on a slice of one was ordinary rather than notable. What the first recipe really teaches is restraint with the pan — cooking medium worth preserving — an instinct one is tempted to connect with red-eye gravy, though the link is inference rather than documented descent. The pudding is a batter dish in the English tradition that runs through Yorkshire pudding and toad-in-the-hole, adapted to cured pork and labelled "a spring dish," probably because it leans on eggs and milk at the season when both were plentiful.