Baked Ham
Soak and prepare the ham as for boiling. Boil slowly for several hours; take out the ham; remove the skin; trim off the black and smoked parts; paint all over with yolk of egg; sprinkle thickly with fine bread crumbs; put in the oven and bake for about an hour, basting frequently with a mixture of water and currant jelly. Trim the knuckle with paper ruffles and serve hot.
This is the two-stage treatment of a whole bone-in ham: a long slow simmer, then a browning in the oven under an egg-and-crumb crust. The instructions assume a dry-salt country ham that has hung for months, which is not what most supermarkets sell.
- Know which ham you haveThe long soak and "boil for several hours" are for a dry-cured, uncooked country ham that is genuinely too salty to eat straight. A modern wet-brined supermarket ham is usually sold fully cooked -- check the label, as some are still marked "cook before eating" -- and if it is, it needs no soaking and no simmering at all; take it straight to the crumbing and baking stage. If you do have a true dry-cured ham, soak it 12 to 24 hours in cold water in the refrigerator, changing the water two or three times.
- "Boil slowly" means simmerA hard boil tightens and shreds the muscle. Hold the water at a bare shiver, around 170F, at roughly 20 to 25 minutes per pound, until the thickest part reaches 145 to 150F on a thermometer. A 12 to 14 lb ham will take four to six hours.
- Oven temperatureBake the crumbed ham at 350F. The point of the hour in the oven is colour and a firm crust, not further cooking; if the ham left the pot fully hot, 30 to 40 minutes is enough.
- The egg-yolk crustThis is the hinge of the recipe. Yolk brushed on warm fat sets almost at once and glues the crumbs in place; brush a thin, even film and press the crumbs on firmly, or they slide off in the basting. Use dry fine crumbs, not fresh soft ones, which go pasty.
- Score the fat firstThe original says only to trim the skin and smoked parts. Leaving about a quarter inch of fat and scoring it in diamonds before the yolk goes on gives the crust something to grip and lets the fat render into it.
- The currant jelly basteRoughly half a cup of red currant jelly melted into a cup of hot water. It is a thin, sharp glaze rather than the thick brown-sugar lacquer of later American baked hams. Baste every 10 to 15 minutes; if it darkens too fast, drop the oven to 325F.
- Paper rufflesA frill of cut paper wrapped round the exposed shank bone, purely for the table and so the carver has something clean to grip. A band of parchment or a folded napkin does the same work.
- Yield and servingFigure about a third of a pound of bone-in ham per person, so a 12 lb ham serves 30 or more with substantial leftovers. Rest it 20 minutes before carving and cut thin slices at a slight angle to the bone.
Boiling a ham and then finishing it in the oven under crumbs was standard practice in British and American kitchens through the nineteenth century, and it exists for a practical reason: a properly dry-cured, long-hung ham was too salty and too firm to roast from raw, so the water bath drew out salt and softened the meat while the oven supplied the browned exterior that a simmered joint lacks. The egg-and-crumb finish is the same coating logic used on cutlets, borrowed for a joint large enough to feed a crowd. Currant jelly as the basting liquid reflects the long-standing pairing of tart red fruit with salt pork and game, and the paper ruffle at the knuckle marks this as a dish meant to be carried whole to a sideboard and carved in front of guests, in the era before the pre-cooked, netted, spiral-sliced ham made all of the first stage unnecessary.