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Braised Ham
Choose a lean ham, partly bone it, without going to the first joint of the first end, saw the shank bone, trim the meat, and soak the ham in water for twelve or thirteen hours. Tie it in a cloth, place it in a large saucepan, cover with water and boil for four hours with a few cloves, peppercorns and sweet herbs, excepting bay leaves. When cooked remove the ham, drain it, peel off the rind, put it in a narrow braising-pan, pour a bottle of Madeira wine over, place the cover on, and boil until reduced, being careful to baste frequently. Drain, place on a hot dish, mix a little brown sauce with the cooking stock, reduce it, and then add two tablespoonfuls of red currant jelly. Strain the sauce through a fine hair sieve over the ham, and serve with vegetables.
This is a French jambon braisé au Madère written for a hotel kitchen with a whole dry-salt ham and a stockpot large enough to hold it. Most of the translation work is in the ham itself: what Oscar bought and what a supermarket sells are not the same product.
- The ham is the whole problemThe recipe assumes a heavily salt-cured, uncooked country ham, which is why it soaks for twelve or thirteen hours and then boils for four. A modern wet-cured, fully cooked supermarket ham needs neither step and will fall apart if given them. If you want this dish, start with an uncooked dry-cured ham (Smithfield-style or similar) and follow the soaking; if you have a cooked ham, skip to the Madeira braise and treat it as a glaze-and-sauce operation of about an hour.
- "Partly bone it"Most likely taking out the aitchbone and hip bone at the butt end while leaving the leg bone in, and sawing the shank off short so the piece fits a pot. A butcher will do both; a household saw on a fresh bone is unpleasant work.
- Boiling time and temperatureFour hours at a bare simmer rather than a rolling boil, which shreds the outer meat. The recipe gives no weight, so judge by a thermometer rather than the clock: 150-160F at the thickest point, or the point where the leg bone twists freely.
- A bottle of MadeiraCall it 750 ml. Use a dry or medium Madeira (Sercial or Verdelho); cheap cooking Madeira sold with salt added will make the reduced sauce inedible. A narrow pan keeps the wine deep enough around the ham to baste from, which is presumably why the pan is specified narrow.
- Braise in the ovenBraise -- "boil until reduced" over a burner risks scorching the wine on one side. If you prefer, cover and hold it in a moderate oven instead, basting often, until the Madeira is a syrupy glaze. The recipe itself specifies neither an oven nor a temperature.
- Brown sauceOscar means espagnole or demi-glace from the day's stockpot. A good reduced veal or beef stock, or a small amount of commercial demi-glace, does the job; the currant jelly at the end is there to balance the salt, so add it off the heat and taste before adding the second spoonful.
- Hair sieveA fine-mesh conical strainer or a chinois.
- No bay leavesThe exclusion reads as deliberate rather than as a copying error, though no reason is given for it. Thyme, parsley stems and marjoram are among the herbs a period cook would have counted as "sweet herbs".
- YieldThe recipe gives no weight, so any figure is a guess; a whole ham will feed a large table and is good cold the next day. Spinach, glazed root vegetables or a puree of peas are period accompaniments.
Oscar Tschirky came to the Waldorf as its maître d'hôtel in 1893 and published The Cook Book by "Oscar" of the Waldorf in 1896, a nine-hundred-page compendium of the hotel's French repertoire. Braised ham with Madeira belongs to that repertoire: the two-stage method of poaching a salt ham to draw out brine and then finishing it in fortified wine is standard nineteenth-century French practice, and the finishing touch of red currant jelly is the same sweet-sharp gesture that turns up in Cumberland sauce and in the English habit of serving jelly with cured and roast meats. Madeira held a particular place in American cellars well into the century, having survived the long sea voyage better than table wine and become the fashionable cooking and drinking wine of the eastern seaboard; a whole bottle poured over a ham was an expenditure the Waldorf could make casually and a home cook would have felt.