No. 390

Ham Essence

Essence de Jambon

Fry in butter and color lightly, one pound of sliced, smoked or unsmoked ham, add to it two ounces of minced onions, and four ounces of carrots, a bunch of parsley garnished with the same quantity of bay leaf as thyme, and moisten with half a pint of white wine; reduce this in a covered saucepan, moisten again with one quart of veal blond (No. 423), and let boil and simmer for forty minutes, then skim and strain through a napkin or fine silk sieve.

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For the Modern Kitchen

A concentrated ham-flavored stock meant to be spooned into sauces rather than served on its own. The whole point is depth without salt overload, so the seasoning discipline matters more than anything else in the method.

The hinge: do not saltCured ham gives up a great deal of salt, and reducing the liquid twice concentrates it. Season only the finished sauce this essence goes into, and taste the veal stock beforehand to confirm it is unsalted or lightly salted.
Veal blondBlond de veau (Ranhofer's No. 423) is a light veal stock, only faintly coloured rather than browned to a deep roast. A good unsalted veal or light chicken stock stands in; avoid anything dark, sweetened, or reduced to a commercial glace.
MeasuresHalf a pint of white wine is one cup; the quart of stock is about 950 ml. One pound of ham sliced perhaps a quarter inch thick gives enough cut surface to color without drying out.
"Color lightly"Take the ham to a light gold, no further. Many cures include sugar, which scorches quickly, and burnt ham fat turns the finished essence bitter and gray.
The bouquet"Parsley garnished with the same quantity of bay leaf as thyme" means a small bundle of parsley stems tied with roughly equal amounts of bay and thyme — in practice one bay leaf and a few thyme sprigs. Tie it so you can pull it out; it is not meant to be strained through the cloth at the end.
Reduce, then moistenThe covered reduction of the wine should leave a syrupy film in the pan, not a dry one. Once the stock goes in, hold it at a bare simmer for the forty minutes — a rolling boil emulsifies the ham fat back into the liquid and clouds the result.
StrainingA napkin means a clean, damp cloth set in a sieve, and it does the real clarifying. Ladle rather than pour, and do not press the solids or the essence goes murky.
Yield and useExpect somewhat less than the quart you started with, depending on how hard it simmers. It keeps a few days refrigerated and freezes well in ice-cube trays; a spoonful or two lifts a Madeira sauce, a velouté, or braised veal.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer built The Epicurean (1894) around his decades at Delmonico's in New York, and the long section of stocks and essences is the machinery behind everything else in the book. An essence in the French professional kitchen of that period was not a bottled extract but a stock reduced with a single dominant flavor — game, mushroom, ham — kept in the larder so a cook could give a sauce a specific character in seconds during service. Ham essence was one way to put cured-pork depth into a sauce without visible pieces of ham, and essences of this kind lie behind Madeira sauces and garnishes for veal and sweetbreads. The system assumed a brigade and a stove that never went out; a home cook making a cup or two at a time is borrowing a fragment of an industrial kitchen's logic.