Devilled Ham
Devilled ham is an excellent dish and affords a most satisfactory method of utilizing remnants of cold boiled ham. Allow one-third of fat to two-thirds of lean; chop the meat as finely as possible, and to every quart of it allow one tablespoon of white sugar; one teaspoon of dry mustard; one saltspoon of cayenne; one-half cup of vinegar. Mix the seasoning well with the meat, and press the whole in a bowl. It is ready to serve at once.
SAUSAGE-When cooking sausage in casings, prick the skins with a steel fork to prevent their bursting. If cooking it in bulk, shape sausage into balls with the hands. Place it in a hot fryingpan, and fry until brown, adding no fat, as there will generally be plenty in the meat. Remove the sausage, when done, to a platter, add one tablespoon of dry flour to the fat in the pan, and cook one minute, stirring all the time; then gradually add one cup of milk, still stirring. When the gravy is boiling and is of a creamy consistency, add salt and pepper to taste, pour the gravy over the sausage, and serve.
Two separate items run together here: a cold devilled ham spread made from cooked leftovers, and a short method for pan sausage with milk gravy. Both work as written, with a few translations.
- A saltspoonA saltspoon is a quarter teaspoon. For a quart of chopped ham that gives a distinctly warm but not fierce heat; scale it back if your cayenne is fresh and hot.
- A quart of chopped meatMeasured by volume after chopping, a quart of finely minced ham is roughly 2 lb. The seasonings scale down cleanly by half or quarter for a small batch of leftovers.
- Fat to leanThe one-third fat is what makes the mixture spreadable rather than dry and grainy. Modern supermarket ham is leaner than a home-boiled joint, so trim less than you think, or work in a spoonful of softened butter.
- Chopping"As finely as possible" would have meant hand work, a chopping knife and bowl. A food processor does it in seconds, but pulse rather than run it continuously or the fat smears and the texture turns pasty.
- The vinegarHalf a cup per quart is a lot of liquid; add it gradually and stop when the mixture just holds together under pressure. Plain cider or white wine vinegar suits it better than anything strongly flavoured.
- Keeping itThis is a seasoned cold spread, not a preserved potted meat -- there is no clarified butter seal and no cooking after mixing. Refrigerate it covered and use within three or four days.
- Yield and servingA quart of the mixture is enough for a large party's worth of sandwiches or toast points. Press it into a bowl or small crock and chill before serving.
- Pricking sausage casingsModern guidance generally runs the other way: pricking can let fat and juices escape and give a drier sausage. Cooking gently over moderate heat helps keep the skins from bursting.
- The gravyOne tablespoon of flour to one cup of milk is a thin gravy by modern standards. Use two if you want it to coat, and let it boil a full minute after it thickens to cook out the raw flour taste.
"Devilled" in nineteenth-century cookery meant nothing more than seasoned hot -- mustard, cayenne, sometimes Worcestershire -- and the term was applied freely to kidneys, bones, biscuits and eggs as well as ham. Spreads of this kind sit at the end of a long line of English potted meats, in which cooked flesh was pounded to a paste with spice and packed into a crock; the difference is that the potted version was sealed under butter and meant to keep for weeks, while this one is frankly a way of using up Sunday's boiled ham before it turns. Commercially canned devilled ham was already familiar to American shoppers by the time Butterick published this, the Boston firm of William Underwood being the name generally associated with it, and a home version like this one would have been read as a thriftier substitute for the tin. That it runs straight on into a note about frying sausage is typical of the period's household manuals, where economy of leftovers was treated as a branch of cookery in its own right.