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Broiled Ham
Either freshen a slice of ham by soaking it in icewater over night, or by heating it in enough water to cover it; then wipe dry, put it between the bars of a gridiron and brown slightly on both sides. Season with salt and pepper, and serve either plain or with fried eggs.
Ham Cooked in Madeira Wine or Champagne Put a ham into a bowl of cold water, and let it soak for a day and a night; take it out, drain it, put it into another saucepan, pour over it one pint of Madeira or champagne, and cook gently until done. Put it on a dish, pour the liquor over, and serve hot with a garnish of cooked vegetables.
Two ham preparations run together: a broiled slice and a whole ham braised in wine. Both assume a hard, heavily salt-cured ham of the kind that had to be tamed before it could be eaten, which is the single fact that governs everything else here.
- "Freshen" means desaltA ham cured for keeping in 1896 was salty enough to be unpleasant straight from the cut. Today's supermarket ham is wet-cured, mild and fully cooked, so skip the soaking entirely and go straight to the gridiron. Reserve the overnight soak for a genuine dry-cured country ham.
- Soak cold, not on the counterThe whole-ham instruction to stand a ham in a bowl of cold water for a day and a night dates from cool larders. Do the long soak in the refrigerator, changing the water two or three times.
- The gridironA gridiron is a grate set over coals; "between the bars" describes a hinged double grid that holds the slice while you turn it. A ridged stovetop grill pan or an outdoor grill gives the same result, or broil about four inches below the element.
- Slice thicknessBroiling suits a slice between a quarter and a half inch thick. Thinner curls and dries; thicker needs a pan and a lid. "Brown slightly on both sides" is two to three minutes a side, no more, since the ham is already cured and often already cooked.
- Hold the saltThe instruction to season with salt and pepper made sense for a slice that had spent the night in water. Taste first; most modern ham needs pepper only.
- "Cook gently until done"The recipe puts the ham in a saucepan, so this is a bare simmer on the stove under a lid, not a roast; reckon on the order of 18 to 20 minutes per pound, cooking until the centre reaches 145F for an uncooked cured ham or 140F for one already cooked. A pint of wine will not cover a whole ham; it is a braising liquid, so the pot must be tightly lidded and the ham turned once or twice.
- The MadeiraUse a dry or medium Sercial or Verdelho rather than a sweet Malmsey, and avoid supermarket "Madeira wine" that has been salted for cooking. Champagne here means any dry sparkling wine; its bubbles contribute nothing once the pot has been simmering, and a still dry white performs the same job.
- YieldThe broiled slice serves one or two as a breakfast dish with eggs. A whole bone-in ham -- the recipe does not say what size -- would run to a dozen pounds or more and serve twenty or so, a dish for a large table rather than a household one.
Oscar Tschirky was not a chef but the maître d'hôtel of the Waldorf, and his 1896 book collects the dishes associated with the hotel. Ham in both these forms was a fixture of the period: the broiled slice with fried eggs belonged to the American breakfast and the hotel grill room, while a whole ham simmered in Madeira was a sideboard dish for a buffet or a supper. The soaking step is the tell. Before mechanical refrigeration was general, hams were preserved by heavy dry salting and long smoking, and cooks routinely spent a day drawing the salt back out before cooking. Madeira is often said to have held a particular place in American cookery and cellars, having arrived through the old Atlantic trade routes, though its vogue was strongest in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries and was already in decline by 1896; its slight oxidised sweetness suits salt pork products well enough that the pairing outlived the fashion for the wine itself.