Baked Ham
Wash and scrub ham in warm water; soak over night. Whether a whole or half ham, put on to boil with cold water enough to cover; boil slowly 4 to 5 hours or until tender. Cool in water in which it was boiled; remove skin carefully; cover with 1 cup brown sugar, 1 cup flour and 1/2 teaspoon pepper; add 2 cups cold water; bake in very hot oven 45 to 60 minutes; baste often. When brown on both sides, add 1 cup cider or 1/2 cup vinegar and thicken with 2 tablespoons flour.
This is written for a dry-salt country ham of the sort that arrived hard, dark and aggressively salty. Nearly every step assumes that starting point, and most supermarket hams need far less of it.
- Which ham this is forThe overnight soak and the four-to-five-hour simmer are there to draw salt out of a dry-cured, long-hung ham. A modern wet-cured supermarket ham is already fully cooked and mildly salted; soaking and boiling it that long leaves you with grey, waterlogged meat. Follow the method as written only with a genuine dry-cured country ham.
- "Very hot oven"In the ranges these books worked from, that is roughly 450-500F. With a sugar crust and 45 to 60 minutes of baking, watch it closely from the 30-minute mark; the brown sugar will darken fast and can scorch before the hour is out.
- The simmer, not a boil"Boil slowly" means barely trembling water, around 180-190F. A rolling boil tightens the muscle fibres and shreds the outer inch of meat before the centre is tender. Count roughly 20-25 minutes per pound for a whole dry-cured ham.
- Cooling in the liquidThis is the instruction that does the most work and the easiest to skip. Letting the ham cool in its own broth keeps it moist and makes the skin peel away cleanly in one sheet; a ham lifted out hot will dry at the surface and fight you.
- The sugar-and-flour crustOne cup of brown sugar, one cup of flour and the pepper form a paste rather than a glaze; the two cups of water in the pan keep it from setting into concrete. Pat it onto the fat layer left after skinning, and leave about a quarter-inch of fat under it.
- The final thickeningAdding cider or vinegar at the end deglazes the pan and cuts the sweetness. Whisk the two tablespoons of flour into a little cold liquid first, then stir it into the hot pan drippings, or it will lump.
- Temperature checkA dry-cured ham is done boiling when a skewer slides into the thickest part with no resistance and the small bone at the hock wiggles free. If you prefer a thermometer, 160F at the centre away from bone.
- YieldA whole country ham of 12-15 lb serves 20 or more, and it is meant to be sliced very thin and eaten over several days. A half ham is the more practical choice for most households.
Baked ham of this kind belongs to the long era before refrigeration, when a hog killed in cold weather was salted, sometimes smoked, and hung to keep for months. The salt that made it keep also made it barely edible straight off the hook, which is why the recipe opens with scrubbing, an overnight soak and hours of slow simmering before any oven work begins. The sugar-and-flour paste is an old dodge: the flour holds the sugar in place so it caramelises into a crust instead of running off into the pan, and the cider or vinegar stirred in at the end is the standard corrective for a rich, sweet, salty joint. Community and commercial cookbooks of the early twentieth century printed the method largely unchanged even as wet-curing and commercially packed hams were coming into use.