Ham, to Boil
INGREDIENTS.- COST, for York ham, 10 to 1s. per lb. perfectly sweet, by running a sharp knife
In choosing a ham, ascertain that it is into it, close to the bone; and if, when the smell, the ham is good; if on the contrary, knife is withdrawn, it has an agreeable the blade has a greasy appearance and offensive smell, the ham is bad. If it has been long hung, and is very dry and salt, let it remain in soak for 24 hours, changing the water frequently. This length of time is only necessary in the case of its be sufficient for a Yorkshire or a Westbeing very hard from 8 to 12 hours would moreland ham. Wash it thoroughly clean, and trim away from the underside all the the appearance. Put it into a boiling-pot, rusty and smoked parts, which would spoil BOILED HAM. with sufficient cold water to cover it; bring it gradually to boil, and as the scum rises, carefully remove it. Keep it simmering very gently until tender, and be careful that it does not stop boiling, nor boil too quickly. When done, take it out of the pot, strip off the skin, and sprinkle over it a few fine bread-raspings, put a frill of cut paper round the knuckle, and serve. If to be eaten cold, let the ham remain in the water until nearly cold; by this method the juices are kept in, and it will be found infinitely superior to one taken out of the water hot; it should, hownot remain in the saucepan all night. ever, be borne in mind that the ham must When the skin is removed, sprinkle over bread-raspings, or, if wanted particularly nice, glaze it. Place a paper frill round the knuckle, and garnish with parsley. to simmer gently; 15 lbs., 5 hours; a very
TIME.-A ham weighing 10 lbs., 4 hours large one, about 6 hours.
SEASONABLE all the year. to have a very superior flavour to one boiled in Note. A ham boiled in champagne is thought water. In large hotels and clubs, what is called ullage wine is used for this purpose.
HAM, HOW TO BOIL.
Ham, How to Boil to give it an excellent flavour. - INGREDIENTS. - Vinegar and water, 2 heads of celery, 2 turnips, 3 onions, a large bunch of savoury herbs.
Prepare the ham as in the preceding recipe, and let it soak for a few hours in vinegar and water. Put it on in cold water, and when it boils add the vegetables and herbs. Simmer very gently until tender, take it out, strip off the skin, cover with bread-raspings, and put a paper ruche or frill round the knuckle. This mode of cooking is for a ham to be eaten hot.
TIME.-A ham weighing 10 lbs., 4 hours.
SEASONABLE at any time.
The text here is a garbled composite of two of Mrs Beeton's ham entries, with lines from the original columns overlapping; read past the repetitions and the method is straightforward. Almost everything that needs adjusting comes down to one fact: the ham she is describing is a hard, dry-salted, long-hung joint, and the one in your shop almost certainly is not.
- Soaking is usually unnecessary nowThe 8-to-24-hour soak exists to draw salt out of a dry-cured ham that has hung for months. A modern brine-cured or supermarket gammon is mildly salted and needs no soak at all; a genuine traditional dry-cured ham (a York or country ham) still does. If in doubt, soak overnight in one change of cold water and taste a little of the cooking liquid early on.
- York, Yorkshire, WestmorelandThese are regional cures rather than brands. York ham is mild and usually unsmoked or only lightly smoked; the recipe treats Yorkshire and Westmoreland hams as needing less soaking than a ham that has gone very hard. Such hams were generally sold uncooked and bone-in, which is why the recipe assumes hours of simmering.
- Testing with a knifeRunning a knife to the bone and smelling the blade was the standard test for bone taint in a whole hung ham. It has no use for a vacuum-packed joint, and puncturing one is counterproductive.
- Timing and temperatureHer four hours for 10 lb works out to roughly 24 minutes per pound, which is generous but not wrong for a bone-in joint. Modern practice is about 20 minutes per pound at a bare simmer, and the reliable test is an internal reading of 160F/71C at the thickest point, away from the bone.
- The hinge: never let it boilThe hinge: gentle simmer, never a hard boil -- Both entries call for simmering very gently, and the first warns against letting it boil too quickly (while also warning against letting it stop). A rolling boil tightens and shreds the muscle fibres and drives out juice; the water should barely tremble. This matters more than the clock.
- Cooling in the liquidHer instruction to let a ham for cold eating cool in its own water is sound and still worth doing. Her caveat matters too: get it out once it is nearly cold rather than leaving it overnight in a warm kitchen, since several hours in the lukewarm zone is exactly where a cooked joint spoils.
- Bread-raspingsDried crusts baked hard, then crushed and sieved to a fine, pale crumb. Fine dried breadcrumbs, toasted a shade darker in a low oven, give the same effect. They are pressed onto the warm fat after the skin is stripped.
- Ullage wineUllage is the wine left in a partly emptied cask, or the dregs and returns collected in a large establishment. The note simply means hotels boiled hams in wine they could not sell, which is worth knowing before anyone pours a bottle of champagne into a stockpot.
- Costs and yield"10d to 1s per lb" is Victorian money and tells you only that ham was a considered purchase. A 10 lb bone-in ham will feed a large table hot, depending on how much of the weight is bone and fat, and will go further again sliced cold.
Boiling was the default treatment for a whole cured ham in British kitchens long before Beeton, because the joint arrived at the house hard, salty and inedible as it stood: the long simmer rehydrated the meat and pulled out enough salt to make it palatable. The trimmings of presentation here are pure mid-Victorian dining room. The paper frill round the knuckle gave the carver a clean grip on the bone and hid the ragged end, and the dusting of bread-raspings covered the exposed fat once the skin was stripped, the recipe itself offering a glaze as the smarter alternative. The second version adds celery, turnip, onion and herbs to the pot, treating the cooking liquor as a flavouring bath rather than a mere salt-leaching medium; the vinegar soak that precedes it is often said to soften the fibres, though it does little beyond seasoning the surface. The champagne note is the sort of detail Beeton's compilers liked to collect from professional kitchens, and it says more about how clubs and hotels used up unsaleable wine than about how anyone cooked at home.