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Fried Ham with Cream Gravy
Properly cured ham will not need freshening; but should the ham be too salt, place it in a frying-pan, cover with cold water, and set the pan on the range in a mild heat. When the steam commences to rise, pour off the water, and add more cold water. As soon as this water steams lift out the slices of meat and drain well before frying. Heat the pan for frying, and when very hot, cook the meat without the addition of fat, unless the ham is exceptionally lean, when a spoonful of pork drippings should be used. When the ham is nicely browned, place it on a platter, and add a cup of milk to the fat in the pan. When this boils, thicken it to a cream with one tablespoon of flour wet to a smooth paste in a little milk, adding pepper to season; then turn the gravy over the ham. A more simple gravy is made by adding a little hot water to the fat, etc., in the pan and pouring this over the meat.
A country-ham technique that assumes a slab of heavily salted, dry-cured meat rather than the mild wet-cured slices sold today. The proportions are sound; the soaking step is the part most cooks can now skip.
- Know which ham you haveSupermarket "ham steak" is wet-cured, mild, and needs no freshening at all — soaking it only makes it watery. The two changes of water (both added cold, then warmed) apply to a genuine dry-cured country ham, which can be aggressively salty.
- Mild heat, not a boil"When the steam commences to rise" means the water is hot but well short of boiling. The point is to draw out salt without cooking the slices, which would toughen them before they reach the pan.
- Fat in the panCook the slices in a dry, thoroughly preheated skillet — cast iron is ideal — over medium-high heat. A modern lean ham steak may stick, so the spoonful of pork drippings (or any neutral fat) is worth using; browning should take 2–3 minutes a side, no more.
- Do not overbrownOnce the edges take colour and the surface glazes, the slices are done; longer frying dries them out and makes the pan drippings bitter, which carries straight into the gravy.
- The gravy hingeScrape the browned fond loose the instant the milk goes in — that residue is the entire flavour of the sauce. Add the flour only as a slurry beaten smooth in cold milk, or it will lump.
- Proportions and thicknessOne tablespoon of flour to one cup of milk gives a thin pouring gravy, as intended. For something closer to modern sausage gravy use two tablespoons. Simmer a full minute after it thickens to cook out the raw flour taste.
- SeasoningPepper only, as written — the drippings carry plenty of salt. Taste before adding any.
- YieldThe recipe gives no yield. A cup of milk makes roughly enough gravy for three or four slices.
Fried ham with a milk gravy is the household form of what the American South calls red-eye gravy's richer cousin: the same pan, the same cured pork, but thickened with flour and milk instead of deglazed with coffee or water. The Butterick Publishing Company, better known for dress patterns and *The Delineator*, put out its cook book around the turn of the twentieth century for exactly the reader assumed here one who kept a whole cured ham and cut from it as needed, and who therefore had to judge for herself whether a given slice wanted freshening. The instruction to fry "without the addition of fat" reflects the hams of that era, which were said to be fatter than what a modern cook meets; the note about "exceptionally lean" ham was the exception then and is the rule now. The final sentence, offering a plain hot-water gravy as the simpler option, follows the same frugal logic often invoked for red-eye: nothing browned in the pan should be washed away unused.