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Ham Slice Baked
1 ham slice (1½ to 2 lb.) ⅛ C bread crumbs 1/2 C brown sugar ½ t pepper ¼ C water Mrs. Ida Bulkey. 1/2 C sweet cider (or juice from fresh or canned fruit) 1 t prepared mustard may be added for those who enjoy this flavor. Cut ham about one inch thick, sear on both sides in a pan set in broiling oven. Then spread over the ham, dressing made by mixing together sugar, crumbs, sweet cider, pepper and water. Bake one to one and one-half hours.
Mrs. F. H. Steele, Kewanee, Ill. 1 C boiled ham, chopped 3 hard boiled eggs 6 soda crackers 1 pt. milk
A church-supper way with a thick center-cut ham steak: sear it, blanket it with a sweet crumb dressing, and let it bake slowly. The recipe assumes a cook who knows her own oven, so the numbers below fill in what the original leaves out.
- Oven temperatureNo heat is given. A slow-to-moderate oven, 325-350F, is right for a bake of an hour or more; hotter and the crumb topping scorches long before the ham is heated through.
- The searing step"A pan set in broiling oven" means the broiler compartment, not a separate appliance. A heavy skillet on the stovetop over high heat does the same job in two or three minutes a side, and gives you a pan to catch the drippings.
- The ham itselfA 1½ to 2 lb slice cut a full inch thick means a center-cut steak from a whole bone-in ham, which a butcher will often cut on request. Packaged supermarket ham steaks are commonly thinner than this; two of them stacked will not behave the same way, so ask at the counter.
- Already-cured, already-cookedMost ham sold now is fully cooked, though some is labelled 'cook before eating' -- check the label, and if it is not fully cooked, cook it through. With a fully cooked slice the long bake is about glazing and flavor, so check at an hour: heated through and browned is done, and the extra half hour will only dry it.
- The pepperA teaspoon and a half of pepper in a dressing this size is more than the dish wants. Season to taste, starting around a half teaspoon, and remember the ham brings its own salt.
- Sweet ciderIn this period sweet cider is unfermented apple juice, not hard cider. Plain apple juice is the direct substitute; the recipe itself offers juice from fresh or canned fruit as an alternative.
- The dressingCrumbs, sugar and liquid make a loose paste rather than a batter. Cover the ham loosely with foil for the first 40 minutes if the top is browning fast, then uncover to set the glaze.
- YieldA 2 lb slice serves five or six as a luncheon dish with a starch and a vegetable.
Community cookbooks of this kind ran on the ham slice, because a cured ham was one of the few large cuts a household could keep without refrigeration and cut from as needed. The pairing of salt pork with sugar and fruit acid is much older than the book: apple, cider and brown sugar against a salty cured leg is a standard of the American and northern European kitchen, and the crumb dressing here does the work a poured glaze would do today while stretching the meat a little further. The double attribution, and the run of contributors' names through the section, is typical of Presbyterian and Methodist church books, which were assembled by soliciting a card from each member of the congregation and printing what came back, spelling and measurements as received.