No. 786

Ham, Boiled and Raw Westphalian

Jambon Bouilli ou cru de Westphalie

Boiled Ham is served cut in thin slices, pared and dressed crown-shaped, garnishing the center of the dish with parsley branches, and decorating with chopped jelly around; serve fresh butter at the same time as the ham.

Westphalia Ham is a raw ham from Westphalia. Slice as finely as possible; roll each piece into small cornets, the fat part on the outer edge, and garnish the inside of these cornets with small sprigs of very green parsley.

← No. 785 Gherkins Cold Side Dishes No. 787 Herring, Shad or Mackerel, Marinated →

For the Modern Kitchen

This is a plating instruction rather than a cooking one: Ranhofer assumes the ham is already boiled or already cured, and spends his words on how it reaches the table. Two dishes are described, one for cooked ham and one for raw.

"Pared"Trim off the rind, the darkened outer edge and any hard glaze before slicing, leaving a clean rim of fat. On a boiled ham this matters visually, since the slices are stood up in a ring and the cut edge is what the diner sees.
Chopped jellyThis is aspic — a clear, well-set meat or poultry jelly, turned out and chopped fine with a wet knife so it glitters. Firm commercial aspic or a gelatine-set clarified stock does the same job; it must be cold and cut at the last moment or it slumps.
Crown-shapedThin slices are folded or curled and leaned against one another in a circle, fat side out, so the ring stands on its own. The recipe specifies no thickness beyond 'thin'; the slices need to be thin enough to bend and hold a curve.
Westphalia ham todayStill made in Germany as Westfälischer Schinken: pork leg dry-cured and typically cold-smoked, often over beech with juniper, and eaten raw. Any good dry-cured raw ham — prosciutto di Parma, speck, jamón serrano — behaves much the same way in this recipe.
Rolling the cornetsRaw cured ham rolls cleanly only at cool room temperature; straight from the refrigerator the fat is brittle and cracks. Let the slices sit ten or fifteen minutes, roll each into a cone with the fat band along the open edge, and stand them point down so they hold.
Fresh butterButter that is fresh rather than salted for keeping; cool but spreadable, served in a separate dish alongside the ham as an accompaniment rather than a garnish.
ParsleyCurly parsley was a common nineteenth-century garnish, holding its shape and colour well. Use small, dry, very green sprigs; wet parsley bleeds onto the ham and the jelly.
YieldNo quantity is given. As one item on a cold side dish service, allow about 1 oz of ham a head, or 2–3 oz if it is the only cold meat on the table.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer's The Epicurean (1894) sets down the service he ran at Delmonico's in New York, and this entry belongs to the run of cold side dishes — gherkins, radishes, marinated herring, sardines — that opened a formal meal in the manner of Russian-service hors-d'oeuvre. That a raw German ham could be listed as casually as boiled ham says something about the reach of the New York provision trade by the 1890s: Westphalian ham, cold-smoked over beech and juniper in the region east of the Rhine, had a long-established export reputation and is mentioned admiringly in English and American cookbooks well before Ranhofer. The cornet — a slice of meat rolled into a small cone and filled — was a stock trick of the garde-manger, applied to ham, tongue and smoked salmon alike, and survives on charcuterie boards today with no memory of the kitchens it came from.