Barbecued Ham
Soak thin slices of ham one hour in lukewarm water; drain, wipe, and cook in a hot frying-pan until slightly browned. Remove to serving dish and add to fat in pan three tablespoons vinegar mixed with one and one-half teaspoons mustard, one-half teaspoon sugar, and one-eighth teaspoon paprika. When thoroughly heated pour over ham and serve at once.
A quick pan sauce for ham steak, built on the fat left in the skillet. The one thing that matters is the soak, and modern ham has largely made it unnecessary.
- The hour-long soakHam of this period was generally saltier than today's, and soaking in lukewarm water drew out the excess. Modern wet-cured supermarket ham is far milder, so the soak can usually be skipped unless you are working with a country ham, in which case an hour is a reasonable start.
- "Thin slices"The book gives no thickness; something around 1/4 inch suits the method. A center-cut ham steak cut that thin browns in two to three minutes a side.
- Pan fatLean modern ham renders very little. Add a teaspoon of butter or oil to the pan before you start so there is some fat for the vinegar to mix into.
- MustardThe book means dry mustard powder, not prepared. If substituting Dijon, use about a tablespoon and cut the vinegar slightly.
- DeglazingTake the pan off high heat before adding the vinegar or it will spit and reduce to nothing. Scrape up the browned bits and let it bubble ten or fifteen seconds, no longer -- three tablespoons is a scant sauce and evaporates fast.
- "Barbecued"Despite the name there is no smoke, no grill and no tomato here; the result is closer to a mustard vinaigrette poured over fried ham.
- YieldThe book gives no yield; three tablespoons of vinegar makes a scant sauce, enough for about two servings spooned over rather than pooled. Doubling the sauce is sensible if you are serving it with potatoes or grits.
The book was written for households that still bought ham cut from a cured whole leg, salted for keeping -- hence the preliminary soak, an instruction common in nineteenth-century American cookbooks that becomes less usual in the twentieth as commercial wet-curing spread. The name is the interesting part: "barbecue" here carries none of the later association with sweet tomato sauce, and is applied to meat served with a pungent vinegar-and-mustard dressing. The pairing of sharp vinegar with cured pork is older than the word and appears wherever salt meat needed cutting through.