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Domestic Receipts
TO COOK A HAM (VERY FINE).
Mrs. J. Beaty Boil a common-sized ham four or five hours, then skin the whole and fit it tor the table; then set it in an oven for half an hour, then cover it thickly with pounded rusk or bread crumbs, and set it back for half an hour. Boiled ham is always improved by setting it into an oven for nearly an hour, till much of the fat fries out; and this also makes it more tender.
TO BOIL A LEG OF VEAL OR MUTTON.
Miss Kate Beaty.
Make a stuffing of bread and a quarter as much of salt pork, chopped fine and seasoned with sweet herbs, pepper and salt. Make deep gashes, or, what is better, take out the bone with a carving-knife and fill up with stuffing, and sew up the opening with strong thread. When there is a flap of flesh lap it over the opening and sew it down. Put it into a large pot and fill it with water, putting in a tablespoonful of salt, and let it simmer slowly three hours. If it is needful to add water pour in boiling water.
Two straightforward boiled-meat receipts from the Beaty family, both written when hams came whole and hard-cured and a leg of veal was a normal thing to buy. The chief adjustment is to the meat itself rather than the method.
- "A common-sized ham" is not a supermarket hamHere it means a whole bone-in hind leg, uncooked and salt-cured (dry-salted or in brine), likely somewhere in the 10-14 lb range, which is why it needs four or five hours in the pot. Most ham sold today is wet-cured and already fully cooked; boiling one for five hours would only leach out flavour and turn it stringy. If you want to follow this method, look for an uncooked country ham or fresh-cured bone-in ham, and soak a heavily salted one overnight, changing the water once.
- Simmer, do not boilDespite the word "boil," hold the water at a bare shiver — around 180-185F. A hard boil tightens the muscle fibres and squeezes out juice, and the outer inch goes dry long before the centre near the bone is done. Cook until the thickest part reads 145-150F for an uncooked ham.
- Oven heatNo temperature is given because there was no dial to give one. 350F does what is wanted here: it renders surface fat and dries the exterior. Give the crumb coating the second half-hour at the same heat, or 375F if you want more colour.
- Pounded ruskRusk is bread baked a second time until dry and crisp, then crushed. Panko or plain dried breadcrumbs are the direct equivalent; fresh soft crumbs will go soggy in the fat rather than crusting. Score the fat and press the crumbs on firmly while the surface is still tacky.
- Leg of veal is a special orderA whole leg of veal is rarely stocked and expensive; a boned leg of lamb is the practical substitute for the mutton version and behaves the same way. Ask the butcher to tunnel-bone it rather than butterflying it, since the receipt wants a closed cavity for the stuffing.
- Stuffing proportions and safety"Bread and a quarter as much of salt pork" works out to roughly 3 cups of crumbs to 3/4 cup finely chopped salt pork. The pork is raw going in, so make sure the centre of the stuffing reaches 165F — with a three-hour simmer it will, provided the joint is fully submerged. Sweet herbs means parsley, thyme, marjoram, savoury.
- Sewing and simmeringUse undyed cotton butcher's twine and a trussing needle; the modern alternative is to tie the joint at intervals over the flap. Three hours at a slow simmer suits a 5-6 lb boned leg. Top up only with boiling water, as the original says, or the pot temperature drops and the cooking stalls.
- Yield and servingA ham this size will feed a large table and would likely have gone on being eaten cold; the stuffed leg would serve roughly 8-10. Neither will brown in the pot, so the ham's crumb crust and, for the leg, a sharp sauce or the reduced cooking liquor are what keep them from looking pallid at table.
Boiling was the workhorse method in a nineteenth-century kitchen with one fire: a large pot could sit at the back of the range for hours needing almost no attention, and it suited the hard salt-cured meats that were, by most accounts, a common way households kept pork through the year. Mrs. Beaty's finishing step — in the oven under a coat of pounded rusk — is often described as a genteel touch of the period, intended to give a boiled joint a presentable crust for the sideboard. The Home Cook Book (Toronto, 1877) was compiled from contributions by named Canadian women to raise money for the Hospital for Sick Children, which is why receipts here run in small family clusters like this pair from a Mrs. J. Beaty and a Miss Kate Beaty. Leg of veal appears as casually as mutton because both were common butcher's meat at the time; the near-disappearance of veal from ordinary Canadian and American cooking is a twentieth-century change, not an old one.