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Broiled Ham
Have six very thin slices smoked ham. Neatly trim off the rough edges. Arrange them on a broiler and broil on a brisk charcoal fire for one and a half minutes on each side.
N. B. It would be advisable to have always on hand a nice, small, raw smoked ham of about seven to eight pounds, kept hung by the string in a cool place, enveloped in a coarse towel; also being careful always to cover again after using some of it.
A three-minute recipe whose only real variables are the thickness of the slice and the ferocity of the heat. The note on keeping a whole ham is the part that has aged badly.
- The hinge: thin slices, fierce heatCut the slices no more than 1/8 inch thick and get the fire or broiler element fully hot before the ham goes near it. Ninety seconds a side is enough to brown the edges and render the fat; much longer and dry-cured ham turns leathery.
- "A brisk charcoal fire"An open grate at high direct heat, the coals covered in grey ash and no flame. Under a domestic broiler, preheat for a full ten minutes and set the rack about three inches from the element.
- Which hamThis means a dry-cured, smoked ham of the country-ham or Westphalian type, sliced from the whole leg, not the wet-cured pink deli ham sold in packets. Supermarket sliced ham is already fully cooked and mostly water; it will steam rather than brown. Look for country ham steaks or ask a butcher for slices off a whole dry-cured leg.
- Stop the slices curlingNick the fat rim in two or three places before broiling. The trimming of "rough edges" in the original is partly cosmetic and partly this: an untrimmed band of rind contracts and lifts the slice off the grid.
- SaltProperly dry-cured ham is aggressively salty and needs no seasoning at all. If the slices are cut from a genuine long-aged country ham, some cooks soak them briefly in milk or water first; Filippini specifies only a small ham of seven or eight pounds, and says nothing about how long it was cured.
- The storage noteHanging a raw ham in a towel in a cool larder worked for hard, long-cured, low-moisture hams in unheated houses, and it is still done with whole intact country hams. It does not transfer to modern hams, which are wet-cured, higher in moisture and lower in salt, and must be refrigerated. Once a ham of any kind is cut into, wrap the cut face and keep it cold.
- YieldSix thin slices serve three to six depending on the size of the leg: a breakfast or supper dish, usually with eggs, fried apples or hot biscuits.
The International Cook Book is Alexander Filippini's, and Filippini spent his career in the kitchens of Delmonico's in New York, which explains the tone of the note more than the recipe does: a household that could be told to keep a whole smoked leg hanging in a cool corner was a household with a cool corner and a cook to manage it. Before domestic refrigeration, an uncut dry-cured ham was one of the few meats that kept itself, and the coarse towel would have kept flies and dust off while still letting air move over the surface. Broiling thin slices over coals was a common American breakfast use for such a ham, in contrast to the European habit of eating some such cures raw and paper-thin; the fast sear renders the fat without driving off more moisture than the slice can spare.