Boiled Ham
Pour boiling water over it and let stand until cool enough to wash, scrape clean (some have a coarse hair-brush on purpose for cleaning hams), put in a thoroughly cleansed boiler with cold water enougn to cover; bring to the boiling point and then place on back part of stove to simmer steadily for six or seven hours or till tender when pierced with a fork (if the ham weighs twelve pounds); be careful to keep water at boiling point, and not to allow it to go much above it. Turn the ham once or twice in the water; when done take up and put into a baking-pan to skin; dip the hands in cold water, take the skin between the fingers and peel as you would an orange; set in a moderate oven, placing the lean side of the ham downward, and if you like, sift over pounded or rolled crackers; bake one hour. The baking brings out a great quantity of fat, leaving the meat much more delicate, and in warm weather it will keep in a dry, cool place a long time; if there is a tendency to mold, set it a little while into the oven again. Or, after the ham is boiled and peeled, cover with the white of a raw egg, and sprinkle sugar or fine bread-crumbs over it; or cover with a regular cake-icing, place in the oven and brown; or, quarter two onions, stick whole allspice and black pepper in the quarters, with a knife make slits in the outside of the ham in which put the onions, place in drippingpan, lay parsley around, and bake till nicely browned. Or, after boiling and peeling, dust with sugar, and pass a hot knife over it until it forms a caramel glaze, and serve without baking. A still nicer way is to glaze with strong meat jelly or any savory jelly at hand, boiled down rapidly (taking great care to prevent burning) until it is like glue. Brush this jelly over the ham when cool, and it makes it an elegant dish. The nicest portion of a boiled ham may be served in slices, and the ragged parts and odds and ends chopped fine for sandwiches, or by adding three eggs to one pint of chopped ham a delicious omelet may be made. If the ham is very salt, it should lie in water over night.
This assumes a whole dry-cured, bone-in country ham of the sort hung in a smokehouse, not the wet-cured, pre-cooked ham sold in supermarkets today. The distinction governs everything that follows.
- Know which ham you haveA modern boneless "boiled ham" or spiral-cut ham is already fully cooked and brined; put it through six hours of simmering and it will disintegrate into salty threads. This method is for a raw, dry-cured country ham, which needs the long soak and the long simmer to become edible.
- The hinge: never let it boilThe hinge: keep it just at a simmer -- The instruction to bring it to the boil and then move it to the back of the stove is the whole technique. The recipe asks for the water to be held at the boiling point and 'not to allow it to go much above it'; in modern terms a bare shiver, around 180-190F, keeps the meat succulent, while a true rolling boil contracts the muscle fibers and turns the ham stringy and dry.
- Soaking is not optional"If the ham is very salt" understates it for a properly cured country ham. Twelve to twenty-four hours in several changes of cold water, refrigerated, is standard, and the water should be discarded each time.
- Timing and donenessSix to seven hours for twelve pounds works out to roughly 30-35 minutes per pound, which is generous by current practice; 20-25 minutes per pound is more usual. Judge by an instant-read thermometer in the thickest part away from the bone rather than by the clock -- current guidance for a raw, cook-before-eating cured ham is 145F with a rest, though many country-ham instructions still call for 155-160F.
- The boilerA "boiler" here is simply a large lidded pot, big enough to submerge the whole ham. Few modern stockpots will take twelve pounds of bone-in leg; a canning kettle or a roasting pan covered with foil on two burners is the practical substitute.
- Moderate ovenAround 350F; a 'moderate oven' in period usage covers roughly 350-375F. The hour of baking after boiling renders out surface fat and firms the exterior; watch a sugar or cracker coating in the last fifteen minutes, as it colors quickly.
- Meat jelly glazeThe "strong meat jelly boiled down until it is like glue" is glace de viande -- stock reduced to a syrup that sets solid. Reduce over low heat at the end, since a scorched glaze is unsalvageable and the sugars catch in seconds.
- Ignore the storage adviceKeeping a cooked ham in a dry, cool place for weeks, and reviving a moldy one in the oven, belonged to a world of cold cellars and heavy salt cures. Refrigerate leftovers and use within about four days, or freeze.
- YieldA twelve-pound bone-in ham serves twenty or more, which is why the recipe ends with instructions for the odds and ends. The chopped-ham omelet -- three eggs to a pint of ham -- feeds three or four.
Dry-cured ham was the keystone of the Southern larder: a hog killed in cold weather, salted, smoked and hung, then drawn on all year. The elaborate finishing described here -- crackers, egg white and sugar, cake icing, caramel, a savory jelly glaze -- shows a nineteenth-century cook treating a preserved staple as a centerpiece for company, borrowing the glazing vocabulary of French professional cookery for a piece of farm meat. The Dixie Cook Book was one of several regional editions spun off from the enormously successful Buckeye Cookery compilations of the 1870s and 1880s, and the layered "or, ..." construction is characteristic of those books, which gathered several contributors' versions of a dish into a single entry rather than choosing between them. The closing note on slicing the good parts for the table and chopping the ragged ends for sandwiches and omelets is the more telling detail: nothing from a ham was thrown away.