No. 1787

Ham a la Benedict or with Jardiniere Roasted

Jambon Roti a la Benedict ou a la Jardiniere

Steep the smoked ham in cold water for twenty-four hours; wash, pare and remove the hip bone; put it in an earthen dish, pour over some Madeira wine and season with whole peppers, cloves, thyme, bay leaf, mace, garlic, sliced carrots and onions and lemon juice; keep it in a cool place for twelve hours turning the ham round several times in this marinade. Five hours before serving, wrap the ham up with its strained marinade fried in butter and moistened and reduced with white wine and the moistening of the marinade, in sheets of strong oiled paper; cover the paper with a flour and water paste so that the ham is hermetically enclosed, then cover this paste with another sheet of very thin oiled paper; lay it either on the spit or in the oven, pour oil over and roast for three hours; remove from the fire and make a small hole on the top to penetrate the paste and papers, set a funnel into this, and pour in a gill of good Madeira, the same quantity of malaga and half a gill of brandy. Cover the hole with a round piece of paper, and paste it over to concentrate all the steam which is essential to obtain success. An hour after, take the ham from the oven or spit, unwrap, pare carefully and glaze with meat glaze (No. 402); dress and garnish around with escalops of foies-gras, cocks'-combs and kidneys, and slices of red beef tongue three-sixteenths of an inch thick, and one inch and a quarter in diameter, quenelles and channeled mushrooms; cover the whole with a well-buttered supreme sauce (No. 547), and trim the handle with a paper frill (No. 10), insert a few skewers in the top garnished with cocks'-combs and channeled mushrooms (No. 118).

This ham may be served with a jardiniere garnishing (No. 677) and a half-glaze sauce (No. 413) served separately.

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For the Modern Kitchen Do not make this as written.

This is a whole bone-in ham baked inside a flour-and-water shell — the old "huff paste" technique — so that it steams in wine rather than drying out. Most of the work is in the wrapping, and that is where the recipe succeeds or fails.

The hinge: an airtight sealThe paste and oiled paper exist to trap steam, not to flavour anything. Roll the flour-water paste about a quarter inch thick, press every seam firmly, and patch any crack that opens during roasting with more paste. When you cut the hole for the funnel, plug it again at once as directed; the last hour is when the fortified wine perfumes the meat.
Soaking may be unnecessaryThe twenty-four hour soak assumes a hard, heavily salted country ham. A modern wet-cured supermarket ham is already mild and will only get watery — skip it. Soak only if you are using a genuine dry-cured country ham, and change the water two or three times.
Oven heatNo temperature is given because the book assumes a spit or a coal range. Bake at around 325F for the three hours, then the further hour after the wine is added. The recipe gives no weight for the ham; if it is a raw dry-cured joint, cook until the deepest part reads at least 145F. The paste shell insulates, so allow the full four hours rather than pulling early.
GillA gill is half a cup. So: half a cup Madeira, half a cup Malaga, quarter cup brandy, poured in through the funnel.
MalagaA sweet fortified wine from Málaga, still made but not always stocked. A cream sherry or a sweet (Bual or Malmsey) Madeira gives the same effect; the point is sugar and alcohol to carry aroma into the meat.
The paste is not foodThe shell will come off grey, sodden and salty from the ham juices. Discard it. Pare the ham, then glaze — a reduced meat glaze, or simply the strained marinade reduced to a syrup with a spoonful of the pan juices.
Garnishes that no longer existCocks' combs and cocks' kidneys have vanished from ordinary trade and would need a specialist butcher. Foie gras escalopes, quenelles, fluted mushrooms and rounds of cured beef tongue all still work; the jardinière alternative at the end — glazed spring vegetables with a separate sauce — is the version worth cooking.
YieldA whole ham of this kind serves twenty or more, and it is meant as a centrepiece to be carved at table. It is very good cold the next day.

A Little History

Ranhofer's The Epicurean (1894) records the kitchen of Delmonico's in New York, and this is a set-piece dish in the grand French manner: a cured ham reclaimed as a roast by enclosing it in the flour-and-water crust English cooks called huff paste. Sealing meat in an inedible paste shell is far older than the nineteenth century — it descends from the medieval and early modern practice of baking in a coffin of stiff dough, where the crust was a vessel rather than pastry — and it survives today mainly in fish baked in a salt case. The name may honour a patron, as many Delmonico dishes did; the Benedict family of New York is the household usually credited with several of them, including the more famous eggs, though the attributions are traditional rather than documented. The alternative finish, à la jardinière, points to the other half of the period's taste: the same joint dressed either with cocks' combs, kidneys and foie gras for a formal service, or with neat glazed vegetables for a plainer one.