No. 1788

Ham a la Leonard-Boiled

Jambon Bouilli a la Leonard

Immerse in cold water for twelve hours a fresh, smoked ham, after cutting off the end of the handle bone and shortening the hip bone; suppress the part of the meat and the smoked fat and lay the ham in a large saucepan covering it over abundantly with cold water; set it on the fire, bring the liquid gradually to a boil, then drain off this water and replace it with tepid water, adding carrots, onions, a bunch of parsley garnished with thyme, bay leaf, sage and basil; season with peppercorns, cloves and mace. At the first boil remove it on one side so that it simmers only (the length of time for its cooking will be a quarter of an hour for each pound); when the ham is nearly done, take the saucepan from the fire and leave it to cool off in the water for one hour longer. Just when prepared to serve drain the ham, suppress the rind and aitchbone, pare the fat and meat around and underneath and cut off all the meat from the handle. Lay the ham on dish and slice a piece off from the bottom so that it will stand plumb; glaze it over with a brush and place it in a deep baking tin with a little clear gravy (No. 404) and as much Madeira wine; boil this up and keep it in a slack oven for fifteen minutes, basting frequently with the gravy. Dress on a long dish on a three-inch high rice socle, trimmed like a croustade and colored in the oven; pour half the gravy over, trim the handle bone with a frill (No. 10) and surround with twenty-four croustades, eight filled with green peas, eight with asparagus tops, and eight with quarter-inch squares of mushrooms. Serve at the same time but separately a sauce-boat of Madeira sauce (No. 492). This ham may also be served with a garnishing of Italian macaroni or lazagnes and a tomato sauce (No. 549) and half-glaze sauce (No. 413) instead of the Madeira.

← No. 1787 Ham a la Benedict or with Jardiniere Roasted Pork No. 1789 Ham, Roasted on the Spit, Madeira Sauce, or →

For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer is working with a whole dry-cured, smoked ham weighing 12 to 18 pounds, hung and salty enough to need twelve hours of soaking before it ever meets the pot. Almost everything about the timing and the soaking depends on that, and almost no supermarket ham today is the same animal.

What "a fresh, smoked ham" meansNot fresh in the modern sense of uncured. He means a raw, dry-salted and smoked ham that has not been cooked — what a US shop would call a country ham. A wet-cured, fully cooked "city ham" needs no soaking and no simmering, only reheating; put one through this method and it will fall to threads.
The long soak is desalting, not tenderisingTwelve hours in cold water, plus the first boil that is thrown away, exist to pull salt out of a hard cure. Change the soaking water two or three times and keep it cold. Skip both steps with a genuine country ham and the dish is inedible.
A quarter of an hour to the poundThat is roughly right for a dry-cured whole ham simmered at a bare tremble — about 3¾ hours for a 15-pound leg — but judge by the meat, not the clock. It is done when the shank bone turns freely and the internal temperature reads 145°F. Never let the water boil; it seizes and shreds the muscle.
Cooling in the liquidThe hour of resting off the heat in the cooking water is not a flourish. It lets the ham reabsorb liquid and firm enough to be skinned and pared without collapsing. Do not shorten it.
Bones and cuts namedThe "handle bone" is the shank, the aitchbone the pelvic bone at the butt end. Ranhofer only trims the handle bone and shortens the hip bone before cooking; the rind and aitchbone come off after, just before serving. The handle is stripped of meat so it can be dressed with a paper frill at table.
A slack ovenA cool oven, by most nineteenth-century usage somewhere in the region of 250-300F. The fifteen minutes with gravy and Madeira is a glazing and basting step, not further cooking; high heat here will dry the exposed surface and scorch the glaze.
Rice socle and croustadesThe socle is a three-inch plinth of stiff, well-cooked rice, moulded, trimmed like a croustade and colored in the oven, purely to raise the ham on the platter. The twenty-four croustades are small bread or pastry cases. Both are staging rather than substance; the ham stands on its own with the Madeira sauce.
Cross-referencesNo. 404 is a clear meat gravy, No. 492 Madeira sauce, No. 413 demi-glace ("half-glaze") and No. 549 tomato sauce. A good reduced brown stock finished with Madeira covers the first two.
YieldThe recipe gives no weight. A whole bone-in ham of the sort described would serve roughly twenty-five as part of a large service, and rather more as one dish among several in a Delmonico's menu.

A Little History

The Epicurean (1894) is Charles Ranhofer's record of thirty-odd years as chef at Delmonico's in New York, and its pork chapter is a catalogue of ways to make a cured leg look like an occasion. "à la Leonard" gives no clue as to whom or what it honours. What the recipe preserves is the older logic of ham cookery, from the era before commercial wet curing and injection brines: hams were salted hard and smoked to keep through the year, so the cook's first job was always to draw the salt back out with a long soak and a discarded first water. The elaborate finish — the rice socle, the ring of two dozen filled croustades, the paper frill on the shank bone — belongs to the service of the period, where a centrepiece was expected to arrive built up on the platter.