Broiled Ham
Soak thin slices of ham one hour in lukewarm water.
Drain, wipe, and broil three minutes.
Three lines that assume a kind of ham most kitchens no longer stock. The soak is the whole point of the recipe, and whether you need it depends entirely on what you buy.
- Soak only dry-cured hamThe hour in lukewarm water is there to draw salt out of a hard, dry-salt-cured country ham, the kind that hung in a smokehouse for months. Modern supermarket ham is wet-cured in brine and already mild; soaking it only waterlogs the meat and dulls the flavour.
- "Broil" means over coalsIn 1896 broiling meant a hinged wire broiler held above a clear bed of coals or set over the open grate of a range. An overhead gas or electric broiler element, or a ridged grill pan on high heat, gives the equivalent result.
- How thin is thinThe book says only 'thin slices' and gives no measurement; it assumes slices cut by hand from a whole ham. An eighth to a quarter inch is a workable reading: anything thicker will not cook through in three minutes; anything thinner curls and dries before it colours.
- Three minutes is total, turning onceThree minutes is total -- Ham is already cured and, in the country style, usually smoked, though dry-cured ham is not cooked. Three minutes of high heat is mainly for browning and rendering the fat edge on a thin slice. Roughly ninety seconds a side, turning once, fits the time given; past three minutes the slice goes leathery.
- Dry it properly"Drain, wipe" is not a throwaway. A wet surface steams instead of searing and will spit under a broiler element. Press the slices between towels until the surface looks matte.
- YieldFigure two thin slices per person as a breakfast or supper dish.
This is Fannie Farmer's Boston Cooking-School Cook Book at its most compressed: no seasoning, no fat, no fuss, because ham needed none of them. The soaking step is the fossil in the recipe. Before mechanical refrigeration was widespread in American homes, pork was preserved with heavy applications of salt, and a country ham could be aggressively saline by the time it reached the table, so cooks freshened slices in water before cooking. Pumped and injected brine curing, which produces the mild, moist ham sold today, spread commercially in the decades around and after this book appeared and made the first sentence largely unnecessary. The recipe sits among the other ham directions -- boiled, baked and fried -- the range of treatments a household would expect to get out of a single cured leg.