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Roast Fresh Ham, Currant Jelly
Allow 1/2 lb. raw meat per person. Trim, wipe, and score the ham. Make cut just below knuckle, slide knife up along the bone and turn it outward, making a half-dozen cuts two-thirds up to the skin and fill with stuffing. Sprinkle ham with salt, pepper and flour. Sear in hot oven, then lower temperature to slow moderate oven (325 degrees) for an hour, increasing to 400 degrees to finish baking. Half hour before serving, sprinkle with sugar and cracker crumbs, and serve with currant jelly.
A whole uncured pork leg, boned out along the shank and pocketed with stuffing. The instructions assume a cook who already knows how long a large roast takes, so the temperature staging matters more here than the clock.
- "Fresh ham" is not hamThis is an uncured, unsmoked pork leg — what a butcher now calls a fresh leg of pork, bone-in, usually 10 to 18 lb with the skin on. Ordering "ham" will get you a cured product that must not be treated this way.
- Cook to temperature, not to the clockThe recipe gives no figure for the initial sear, only 'hot oven'; a hot oven is conventionally taken as somewhere around 425-450F. The middle stage is 325F as stated, the finish 400F. A stuffed bone-in leg needs roughly 20 to 25 minutes per pound in total; go by a thermometer in the thickest muscle, 145F, and rest 20 minutes before carving.
- The stuffing is the hingeStuffing buried against the bone is the last thing to heat. Take a second reading in the centre of the stuffing pockets and look for 165F; if the meat is done and the stuffing is not, the roast was packed too tightly. Fill the cuts loosely.
- Scoring the skinScore the rind in a diamond pattern about 1/4 in. deep, through fat but not into meat. This is what lets the skin crisp during the 400F finish rather than turning to leather.
- The sugar-and-crumb crustApplied a half hour out, at 400F, sugar scorches quickly. Watch it, and tent any part of the roast that is browning ahead of the rest.
- Cracker crumbsPeriod cracker crumbs mean plain soda or water crackers, crushed fine — closest modern equivalent is unsalted saltines or dry unseasoned breadcrumbs, not seasoned packaged crumbs.
- YieldAt 1/2 lb raw bone-in meat per person, a 12 lb leg is planned for about 24 servings — a large holiday table, with leftovers assumed.
- The stuffing itselfNo stuffing is specified; a plain bread-and-sage or bread-and-apple dressing would be a common choice with pork.