Broiled Ham
Cut ham very thin, cover with cold water, heat slowly to the boiling point. Drain, dry, and broil.
Three sentences that assume a kind of ham most kitchens no longer keep: a hard, heavily salted dry-cured slab cut to order. The blanching step is the whole point of the recipe, and with modern ham it is usually the step to skip.
- What the water is forCovering the slices with cold water and bringing them slowly to a boil draws out salt from a dry-cured country ham. Today's wet-cured supermarket ham is already mild; blanch it and you get pale, waterlogged meat. Reserve this treatment for genuine country ham, prosciutto ends, or an old-style salt-cured slice.
- "Broil" meant a gridironBroiling at this date was usually done over hot coals or on a ridged iron over direct heat, though gas ranges of the period also had broiling ovens. A hot heavy skillet or a grill pan gives a close result: high heat, no added fat, a minute or two a side.
- How thin is very thinThe recipe does not say; something in the region of 1/8 inch, about deli-slice thickness, suits the method. Thicker slices need longer over the heat and are more likely to dry out before they are done.
- Dry it properlyWet ham steams rather than sears and will not take on colour. Blot both sides hard with a towel and let the slices sit a few minutes in the air before they meet the pan.
- Watch for scorchingMany cures carry sugar as well as salt, and a sugar-cured slice colours and then burns quickly. Pull it the moment the edges curl and the fat turns glassy.
- Yield and servingFigure two thin slices per person as a breakfast portion, or three or four for a supper dish. Eggs, fried apples, or hot biscuits are the usual companions, and any browned bits in the pan are worth deglazing with a splash of coffee or cream for gravy.
Broiled ham of this kind belongs to the era before refrigeration made mild cures practical: hams were preserved with enough salt to keep for a year in a smokehouse, and the cook's first job was to get some of that salt back out. Blanching, soaking overnight, or parboiling before frying were all standard household answers to the same problem, and the instruction appears with little explanation in books of the period, which suggests readers were expected to know it already. Lowney's Cook Book, published by the Walter M. Lowney Company of Boston as a promotional volume for its chocolate and cocoa, nonetheless carried a full complement of plain American meat cookery like this one, meant for a household cooking three hot meals a day. That a recipe could consist of eighteen words tells you how much practical technique was assumed rather than taught.