To Bake Ham
Soak over night, wipe, place in turkey pan with a little water or sherry wine. Cover tightly so as to keep the steam in pan. Cook from 3 to 4 hours, according to size of ham. Some make a paste of dough and bake ham in this.
A bare-bones method from the era when a ham came from a barrel of brine or a smokehouse and arrived in the kitchen too salty to cook without leaching. Almost everything you need to adapt it depends on which kind of ham you actually have.
- The overnight soakThis step exists for dry-salt country hams and heavily brined whole hams, which can be aggressively salty. A modern supermarket ham, wet-cured and often labelled ready-to-eat, needs no soaking at all and will only get waterlogged. Soak only a genuine dry-cured country ham, changing the water once or twice.
- Turkey panA large oval roasting pan with a domed lid. Any covered roaster or a deep pan sealed tightly with heavy foil does the same job: the point is to trap steam so the ham braises rather than dries.
- No oven temperature is givenFor a covered ham of this kind, use a moderate oven, 325F. Higher heat with a lid on will simply boil the outside before the centre is warm.
- Cook to temperature, not to the clockThree to four hours suits a 10-14 lb bone-in ham, but size and starting temperature vary too much to trust time alone. A ham labelled fully cooked wants 140F at the centre; an uncooked cured ham wants 145F followed by a rest.
- Water or sherryA cup or so is plenty. Its job is to generate steam, not to poach the ham, and the pan should never be swimming. The drippings, skimmed, make a good sauce base, though a country ham's will be too salty to reduce far.
- The dough pasteA coarse flour-and-water crust, called 'huff paste' in older English cookery, moulded over the ham. It functions as a sealed vessel rather than as food and is normally broken off and discarded before serving. It holds moisture well but makes it impossible to check a thermometer partway through.
- FinishingMrs. Wilson stops at the baking. A common period finish is to strip the rind, score the fat, press on brown sugar or crumbs and mustard, and glaze it uncovered for 15-20 minutes in a hot oven; about 425F on a modern range.
- YieldBone-in ham runs roughly two to three servings per pound as a main dish, so a 12 lb ham feeds a large gathering or leaves substantial leftovers for a household.