No. 1791

Ham with Spinach-Boiled

Jambon Bouilli aux Epinards

Take a fine freshly salted, smoked ham, pare the meats also the fat, which should be exceedingly white; suppress the hip bone, saw off the knuckle bone and then unsalt the ham in a plentiful supply of water for twenty-four hours. If it should have been dried and salted for some time prior to the day of using, then it will require thirty-six hours of unsalting. Wash, drain and tie it in a towel. Five hours before serving lay it in a large braziere or soup pot with four times its volume of cold water, adding four quartered carrots, two onions containing six cloves, a bunch of parsley garnished with thyme, bay leaf, basil and mace, then let it boil and simmer slowly for four hours more or less, according to the weight and size of the ham, calculating a quarter of an hour for each pound. To be assured that it is properly cooked, run the tip of a skewer into the flesh and if it can be withdrawn at once the ham is sufficiently done. Remove the braziere or pot from the fire half an hour before serving; drain the ham on a dish, take off the towel and pare the rind and fat tastefully; clean the handle bone thoroughly cutting off the meat for about two and a half inches from the end, then set it in the oven to dry the surface. Garnish the top of the fat with a thin layer of quenelle forcemeat (No. 92), containing lobster butter, and arrange in the center of this a fanciful decoration of pistachioes, truffles, etc., cover with buttered paper. Set the ham in the oven to poach the forcemeat, or if preferred glazed, then replace it by a glaze made by besprinkling the fat with sugar and glazing it of a fine reddish color. Dress the ham on a garnishing of spinach (No. 2821), trim the handle with a frill (No. 10) and lay around some triangle-shaped croutons fried in butter; serve with a Madeira sauce (No. 492). Instead of chopped spinach, English spinach (No. 2823) may be used. Serve a half-glaze sauce (No. 413) separately.

← No. 1790 Ham, with Carrots, Stuffed Tomatoes or Mushr Pork No. 1792 Virginia Ham with Stringed Eggs (jambon de V →

For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer is writing for a brigade with a stockpot always going and a whole raw dry-cured ham on hand. The cooking itself is simple; almost all the work is in sourcing the right ham and in the decorative finish, which is optional.

The ham this needs"Freshly salted, smoked" means a raw, dry-cured, uncooked ham — the modern equivalent is a country ham or an uncooked smoked whole leg. Nearly every supermarket ham today is wet-cured and sold fully cooked; it needs no soaking and simmering it four hours will shred it.
The soak is not optionalA dry-salted ham is aggressively salty and must be drawn in cold water for 24 hours, 36 if it has hung a while. Do it in the refrigerator or in a cold place, changing the water three or four times; a ham sitting out in tepid water for a day and a half is a different problem entirely.
Butchery termsThe "hip bone" is the aitchbone, removed to make carving possible. The "handle bone" and "knuckle" are both the shank end; you saw off the tip and scrape the last two and a half inches of bone clean so it can take a paper frill.
Never let it boil"Let it boil and simmer slowly" is period phrasing for bringing it up and then holding it barely trembling, around 180F. A rolling boil squeezes the muscle fibres and gives you dry, stringy ham no amount of sauce will rescue.
Timing and the skewer testA quarter hour per pound is a fair estimate, but weigh after trimming and check with a thermometer as well as the skewer: 150-160F at the thickest point, away from bone. The half hour of resting in the cooking liquor before draining is worth keeping — it finishes the cooking and keeps the meat moist.
The vesselA braziere here is simply a large deep braising pot, not a brazier. Four times the ham's volume in water means a very large stockpot or a fish kettle set across two burners.
Oven workDrying the surface, poaching the forcemeat under buttered paper, and setting the sugar glaze all happen in the oven; Ranhofer gives no temperature, and a moderate oven of about 350F is a reasonable modern reading. For the sugar glaze, watch it — it goes from reddish to burnt in a couple of minutes.
The decorationQuenelle forcemeat (No. 92) is a pounded, panada-bound farce, here enriched with lobster butter and used as a smooth pink coating on the fat, inlaid with truffle and pistachio. It is pure display and can be skipped; the sugar glaze alone is the plainer finish Ranhofer offers as an alternative.
YieldA whole bone-in ham of 12-16 lb serves twenty-five or more as a hot centrepiece. Plan for spinach, Madeira sauce and the fried croutons to be made while the ham rests.

A Little History

This is No. 1791 from Charles Ranhofer's The Epicurean (1894), the vast compendium he assembled from more than thirty years as chef at Delmonico's in New York — a book written less as a domestic manual than as a working record of a great restaurant kitchen, which is why it cross-references a forcemeat, a spinach, a sauce and a paper frill by number rather than repeating them. Boiled ham with spinach is a thoroughly French pairing: the mild sweetness of cured pork against the iron of spinach appears in jambon aux épinards long before Ranhofer, and the trick of dressing the whole ham on a bed of it belongs to the era of service where a decorated joint stood on the sideboard to be admired before it was carved. The lobster-butter forcemeat coating inlaid with truffle and pistachio is the giveaway detail of high nineteenth-century grande cuisine: an edible surface treated as a canvas, a habit generally traced to Carême's generation and still expected of a first-class kitchen in Ranhofer's.