Broiled Ham
Place on the broiler and turn the slices frequent ly. When it is done, put on a hot platter and pour melted butter over it. Some prefer to use boiled ham for broiling instead of raw.
A three-line recipe that assumes you know what ham looked like in 1911: a slice cut from a whole dry-salt-cured, unsliced ham, half an inch thick or more, and salty enough to need no seasoning. The technique still works, but the meat has changed more than the method.
- What "raw" ham means hereThis is dry-cured, uncooked country ham — salted and smoked, not the wet-cured pink deli ham sold today. If you use modern supermarket ham it is already fully cooked, which is precisely the alternative the last sentence describes as "boiled ham."
- Cut thicknessCut the slice 1/2 to 3/4 inch thick. Thin sandwich slices curl, dry out and burn before the fat renders, and there is nothing to turn frequently.
- The broiler is a grillIn 1911 "the broiler" commonly meant a hinged wire gridiron held over coals or set on the range top, though gas ranges of the period also had broiling ovens; either way the food is turned, hence the instruction. Under a modern overhead broiler set the rack 3-4 inches from the element, or use a ridged pan over high heat, and turn every minute or two.
- TimingSix to ten minutes total for a half-inch slice, depending on heat. With a long-aged dry-cured slice the aim is to heat it through rather than to cook it hard; overcooking drives out moisture and leaves it leathery. Any ham that is not a fully cured, aged product should be cooked through.
- Soaking very salty hamGenuine long-cured country ham can be aggressively salty. Traditional practice is to soak the slice in cold water or milk for 20-30 minutes and pat it dry before broiling; taste a small trimmed piece first to see whether it is needed.
- Melted butter over salt porkMelted butter over ham -- Poured melted butter was a common finish for broiled meats in cookery of this period. A tablespoon for two servings is plenty; with a fatty country slice you may want none at all.
- YieldOne 1/2-inch slice from a whole ham, roughly 8-10 oz with the bone, serves two as a breakfast or supper dish. In the American South a pan gravy made by deglazing the drippings with coffee or water is a traditional accompaniment, though this recipe finishes with butter instead.
Broiled ham belongs to the era when a household bought or cured a whole ham and cut from it all winter, so a recipe needed only to say what to do with a slice. The Butterick Publishing Company — better known for dress patterns — issued its cook book in the 1910s as part of a broad line of domestic manuals, and its terseness here is typical: the book assumes a cook who already knows how to manage a coal range and a gridiron, and spends its words on the things she might not know. The distinction the last line draws between raw and "boiled" ham marks a real transition. Wet-cured, factory-boiled hams were becoming widely available through the packing houses in this period, and cooks were beginning to treat ham as something reheated rather than something cooked from the cure — the same shift that makes most ham sold today already fully cooked before it reaches a pan.